Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [160]
Chapter 13
Fruit
Humans have an intimate relationship with fruit. After succumbing to the forbidden fruit, the story goes, we lost our innocence and were consigned to an agrarian future of raising plants for our survival. The Biblical trope makes sense because, botanically speaking, fruit is the ripened ovary of a plant containing the plant’s seed. The bright colors and tempting aromas of fruit are designed to entice creatures to eat the fruit and spread the seed to ensure the plant’s survival. We eat the fruit. The plant regenerates. We regenerate. A happy ecology is born.
Classes of Fruit
Fruits are among the most nutritious foods on the planet. They contain virtually no fat, and they’re loaded with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and health-protecting antioxidants. Most are sweet, juicy, and bursting with delicious aromas. The high sugar content of fruits makes them ideal for the grill. The sugars melt, brown, and caramelize, creating hundreds of new flavor compounds, which make the fruit taste even better.
To get a handle on grilling fruit, it helps to observe where the fruit grows and to learn about its family. Temperate-climate fruits grow on trees, bushes, and vines. These plants needs a period of cold before they will flower and bear fruit. Temperate-climate fruits include pome fruits like apples, stone fruits like peaches, and other fruits such as berries, grapes, and kiwis. Subtropical fruits are similar but not hardy to extreme cold. Most can tolerate a mild frost but also withstand tropical climates, depending upon their location. Subtropical fruits include citrus fruits, figs, avocados, dates, persimmons, and pomegranates. Tropical fruits grow in any frost-free environment, and many can tolerate the coolest temperatures of subtropical climates. Here are more details on the most popular fruit families for grilling.
Pome Fruit
This family includes apples (pomum in Latin), pears, quince, loquats, and medlars. All pome fruits develop from the plant’s flower base rather than its ovary, which makes pome fruits more fibrous than other fruits. Fiber gives apples and pears their crisp texture. When pomes are overripe, though, they become mushy or grainy, which is why most of them are picked underripe. The fibrous structure allows pome fruits to withstand long cooking, as in grill-baked apples and grill-poached pears. These fruits also contain enough pectin to thicken into sauces like applesauce. Quince contain so much pectin that they are too firm to be eaten raw and must be cooked. For the best quality, choose firm, unblemished pome fruits. To prevent enzymatic browning, coat apples and pears with citrus juice or another acid once they are cut.
Stone Fruit
Peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, and cherries all have a hard stone or pit at the center. The family also includes mangoes, dates, and olives. There are two subcategories of stone fruits: Clingstone fruit ripen early and contain pits that cling tightly to the flesh. Freestone fruit ripen later in the season and release the flesh from the pit easily. The soft, sweet, juicy flesh of freestone peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums take extremely well to the grill. When ripe, stone fruits will yield to gentle pressure and emit a fragrant aroma.
Melons
As members of the gourd family, melons come in a staggering variety of shapes and sizes. Most melons, like honeydew and cantaloupe, belong to the Cucumis genus, which is characterized by seeds, gel, and/or strings at the center of the fruit. But watermelons belong to the Citrullus genus and their seeds are scattered throughout the fruit. Melons have thick rinds and firm, sweet, very juicy flesh, which is typically eaten fresh. We’ve found that watermelons, despite being 92 percent water, make a delicious grilled steak. Choose firm melons that feel heavy for their size, indicating maximum water content. Watermelons with a pale patch on one side (where the melon sat on the ground) have been ripened on the vine, rather than picked when immature and ripened