Produce News for the Week of June 28, 2010

CANTALOUPE (Monday, June 28): Hey, the little Marks brothers, little Landon and Lincoln, they call these candy melon. That’s right. Cantaloupe this time of year…oh, my goodness…cantaloupes are so sweet and so good. Couple things I want you too look for: first of all, this time of year I want you to look at the background color. Now if you look at the background color on this cantaloupe it’s all green in the background. That’s not the way it should be. Right here, see that nice golden color. That is the golden background color. That is what we’re looking for this time of year. By the way, when you walk by the big display of these at the produce department or farmer’s market, just sniff. Oh yes, you know good cantaloupe…by the smell. Cantaloupes belong to the musk melon family. What does musk mean? Strong aroma. So if you walk by the display you smell nothing. Well, that probably means there is very little flavor in there, but when you walk by and you smell that wonderful aroma of cantaloupe, that is some good cantaloupe, and that’s when you’re going to open it up and you’re going to find what my Marks brothers call…yeah, that’s right. Candy melon.
MANGOES (Tuesday, June 29): They are indeed the most popular fruit in all of the world. Ah, what do you think? Oranges? Ah, that’s close. Ah, grapes? I guess if you combine wine grapes and table grapes you could be there. Ah, bananas? Bananas are very popular. In fact bananas are the most popular fruit in America, but it is not the most popular fruit in the world. The most popular fruit in the world, yea right here, beautiful mangoes. Ah, the peach, the tropical peach is what it’s been known as. Oh, my goodness! Now if mangoes this time of year…what I want you to look for is, take a look at those tops. See those stems right there? Those. Those stems should be down in the little valley. See how that’s a little valley right there? This is a mature mango. It indeed will ripen. Now even though this is totally green, what you look for…look at the stems. It’s down in the little valley. If it’s up on a hill, that is an immature mango that will never ever in a million years ripen. This one down in the little valley, even though it is green it will turn a beautiful golden color in about five days. Get out the lime juice and the cayenne pepper.
YUKON GOLD POTATOES (Wednesday, June 30): Hey, there’s some Yukon gold panning going on in, well, of course, Yukon Territory, Canada, so I thought I’d talk about Yukon gold today – getting you ready for July 4. I call these Shaen and Katie potatoes. Actually Shaen, my oldest son, and his beautiful and lovely wife Katie – this is what they serve a lot of times when we come down for holidays or put on the grill. We just have some Yukon gold, and we’ve got my tin foil. You’re just going to Pam it up. That’s right. Just Pam it up or whatever spray you have. Now we’re going to take the potatoes, you ready for this? Really simple. The key to this is to make sure all of the cuts are basically the same. That way it cooks up roughly the same. So make sure the dices are all about the same size. This is going to go right in here. Then what we’re going to put in there, a little pat of butter. Oh, a pat of butter goes right on top and then just a little bit of garlic salt right on top. That goes on the grill. Right? On the grill. Grill them for about 30 minutes. When your steak comes off, the Shaen and Katie potatoes come off too. They’re fantastic.
TOMATOES (Thursday, July 1): Well, July 4th holiday weekend coming up, and that means you’re probably going to be out at the barbecue and you’re probably going to have some burgers, maybe some hot dogs this day, but if you’re going to have some burgers, you’re going to need a tomato on that burger. Right? So here’s what I want you to do. Get those nice vine ripened tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine, whatever tomato you have. Doesn’t matter. I want you to take it whole out to the picnic. You’re going out to the park or out to the lake, the river, wherever. Just take the Tomatoes whole. Do not slice them at home, and there’s a reason why. You need to take your knife and cutting board out with you as well because, let me show you something. When you slice a tomato…you are slicing through thousands of cells called Z9 – a very complicated chemical, but that’s what you smell. And it is the flavor, it is the aroma that gives tomatoes such flavor. Right? But Z9 dissipates…within 15 minutes, so, for the fullest flavor Tomato, slice your tomato just before you put it on the burger.
RUSSET POTATOES (Friday, July 2): 1890 Idaho became…this weekend Idaho became our 43rd state. Thank goodness! Where would we have Idaho grown potatoes, those beautiful Idaho Russet potatoes? Where else would they be unless Idaho? Oh, man! They grow more potatoes than any other place in the United States, certainly almost any other place in the world. So, we’ve got Russets. We’ve got July 4th this weekend. That means we need a little bit of potato salad. Now, I know I talked before about if you’re...oh, that’s alright. Leave that one alone. If you’re making potato salad, I like a lot of sugar in my potato salad, so I use potatoes that have sugar instead of starch so that’s like your red potatoes and white potatoes. Now, a great chef friend of mine, he mixes the potatoes. He does 50% Russet so he gets that nice starch flavor and 50% of the red. So here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to do 50% Russet in honor of Idaho and 50% red. You are going to have one of the best potato salads ever for July 4th.