Tag: fruit

Edible Use of Bergamot

15.6.2018

INGREDIENT FOR MANY FOODS

There are many ways to employ Bergamot and all are a great piece of Mediterranean culture of gastronomy, where Calabria shows all its core of scents and fragrances.

A first, non negligible example, is a digestiv liqueur derived from bergamot, called “Liquore al Bergamotto” and produced by Carpentierbe, a company based in San Giorgio Morgeto.

Then, there is a considerable edible use in Earl Grey tea. It is a long time that this tea is used as a drink mixer, in particular for gin, within the British Isles.

 

EARL GREY TEA AND BERGAMOT

Somewhat similar in principle to the Irish coffee, though this is seldom practised today, Earl Grey Tea is flavored with Bergamot. Although the drink was never to achieve the ubiquity of the Irish coffee, it continues like many retro cocktails to be offered as a niche item in some contemporary bars and restaurants. This tea blend which has been flavoured with the addition of oil of bergamot contains that Bergamot variety of orange, which is the well known citrus fruit often growing in Italy and France. Its rind’s fragrant oil is added to Black tea to give Earl Grey its signature pungent punch.

Historically, the Tea flavoured with bergamot was used to imitate the more expensive types of Chinese tea.

Earl Grey Tea was been known in England since 1820 and the first known published references to an “Earl Grey” tea, flavoured with Bergamot, are advertisements by Charlton & Co. of Jermyn Street in London in the 1880.

The origin of the name is “Earl Grey’s Mixture”, so called after Charles Grey, British Prime Minister, received a diplomatic gift of tea flavoured with bergamot oil. The story is that a Chinese mandarin gave to Lord Grey a  bergamot oil flavoured tea, but it is reputed a legend, even if, according to the Grey family records, the use of bergamot in the tea was made in order to offset the preponderance of lime in the local water.

The Grey tea, which  employs Bergamot orange (Citrus bergamia),  has the following versions:

  • Cornflower Lady Grey
  • Citrus Lady Grey
  • London Fog
  • French Earl Grey
  • Russian Earl Grey
  • Earl Green tea
  • Earl Grey White or “Earl White”
  • Rooibos Earl Grey.

For example, Lady Grey tea is a black tea scented with oil of bergamot, but it is very recent. Lady Grey tea is a modern invention, created by and trademarked by Twinings in the early 1990s to appeal to the Nordic market, which found Earl Grey tea too strong in flavor. Lady Grey differs from Earl Grey in that it contains additional lemon peel and orange peel. It first went on sale in Norway in 1994 and in Britain in 1996.

The Twinings blend contains black tea, orange peel, lemon peel, and citrus flavoring (bergamot).

Finally, we can not pass in silence that Earl Grey tea flavours many types of cakes and confectionery, chocolates and sauces.

 

BERGAMOT INSIDE SWEETS OF OTHER COUNTRIES

It is quite strange learning that any Turkish delight, lokum or rahat lokum, are a family of confections based on a gel of starch and sugar, which employs Bergamot.  But it is real, and let us know the huge importance of Citrus inside Mediterranean culture.

The traditional varieties of these Turkish sweets are mostly flavored with rosewater, mastic, but often with “Bergamot orange”, or lemon. Other common flavors include cinnamon and mint.

This Turkish delight is eaten in small cubes dusted with icing sugar, copra, or powdered cream of tartar, and it is known to have been produced in Turkey as early as the late 1700s, suggesting a Persian origin.

There is also a Greek variation, λουκούμι (loukoumi), which shares a similar etymology with the modern Turkish and it is marketed as Greek Delight.

Also in Cyprus, the same scent of Bergamot, is present inside dessert protected by a geographical indication (PGI). Known as  Cyprus Delight, the same sweets are present also in Armenian and there called lokhum, while Bosnia and Herzegovina and Israel have their rahat lokum, and Serbo-Croatians have “ratluk”. The entire area of ancient Persia, therefore, knows this Bergamot flavours, inside the famous sweet called “rāhat-ol-holqum”.

In any case, this Calabrian fruit and its scent wanders through the European world, even in Bulgaria, where the same Turkish Delight is known as lokum, and, as said, in Greece, where Turkish Delight is “loukoumi” or λουκούμι.

In Greece this delicacy is related to the city of Patras, with the name “Patrina loukoumia”, and to the island of Syros, to the towns of Thessaloniki, Serres and Komotini. Here Bergamot, the very essence of Mediterranean culture and gastronomy, is a common traditional ingredient, combined also inside biscuits.

 

JAM OF BERGAMOT

Another way to employ Bergamot, this great piece of Mediterranean culture of gastronomy, is producing marmalade.

Generally speaking, marmalade is a fruit preserve, made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water. It can be produced not only from Bergamot, but also from kumquats, lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins, sweet oranges and other citrus fruits, or any combination of them.

Our preferred citrus fruit, Bergamot, is employed for marmalade production,  primarily, in Britain, where is also used Spanish Seville orange, Citrus aurantium  and other fruits, in order to attain typical consistency of marmalade, – but also in France, near Nancy.

The peel of Bergamot imparts a lively bitter taste to the marmalade.

Bergamot is certainly more recent than the ancient recipes of marmelade, but since the Romans learned from the Greeks the recipe of μελίμηλον (melimēlon, “honey fruit”), today transformed into Portuguese “marmelo”, and since the Greek word μῆλον (mēlon, “apple”) stood for all globular fruits, – we can conjecture that Romans knew jam of citrus.

The most famous Roman cookbook of Apicius gives a recipe of marmalade for preserving fruits, inside a bath of honey diluted with defrutum. The mix, known as Roman marmalade, preserved also quince and lemon.

A similar recipe appears in the Book of ceremonies of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, a real catalogue of the foods available and dishes made from Byzantines.

Afterwards, since the Middle-age to Renaissance, the marmalade of oranges is a long lasting  recipe. We arrive to the age of the Scottish grocer James Robertson, who created Golden Shred marmalade in 1864. This Scottish maybe made reference to a previous English recipe book of Eliza Cholmondeley of 1677 (recorded in the Cheshire county), where there is  the earliest British marmalade recipes  of oranges (so called “Marmelet of Oranges”).

There is much to say about bergamot, citrus and the term “marmalade” and its variations in Europe, but everywhere when we say Marmalade the word is used as a generic term for preserves of all fruits, whereas only in Britain it refers solely to a citrus preserve. This show an ancient tie with citrus (maybe Bergamot) and jam.

This relationship is maybe reinforced by the history of the Scottish city of Dundee, where  is a long association between marmalade and lemon or citrus or bergamot. The story tells of James Keiller and his wife Janet, of their preserves shop in the Seagate area of Dundee and of the factory producing “Dundee Marmalade”, a preserve of “bitter” Seville orange rind. The business is still alive today.

 

Diamante Citron, a biblical fruit

8.4.2018

The Diamante citron is a variety of citron named after the town of Diamante, and there is a museum,  located in such town, in the province of Cosenza, Calabria, on the south-western coast of Italy, dedicated to preservation of  all the tradition of such cultivation.

This fruit has a pluri-millenary history, given that the same Bible mentions this variety, sometimes called the “Calabria Esrog”. “Esrog” is the Ashkenazi transliteration of the Hebrew name for citron.

The connection with Israel is not casual.

In the Old Testament, Leviticus 23:40 makes reference to the fruit of a beautiful tree, or Perì ‘etz adar in Hebrew: “On the first day you shall take the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.”

The Talmudic tradition denotes the citron or Etrog as the fruit described in this verse. Thus, the citrus has been integral to Jewish celebrations for a very, very long time. The fruit is one the four fruits used in the cerimony of the “Feast of the Tabernacles”, the week-long festival (also called “Sukkot”) which celebrates the unity of the Jewish people and the biblical account of their escape from slavery in ancient Egypt to the promised land via 40 years in the desert.

Historically and for centuries, the farmers of the place have grown citrons that are considered among the best in the world. However, these citrons are among the most requested as etrogim for the festival of Sukkot, – in Israel.

This way, during the summer, several rabbis from all over the world move to the coast of Diamante to harvest, personally, the best fruits and send them to Jewish communities in the US, Israel, Russia, Canada, UK and the rest of the world.

In any case, the rabbis are never considered foreigners in this place, they are very familiar to local people. This is the reason why farmers are aware of the kashrut requirements.

The tradition says the cultivation was introduced by the same Jews, living here for centuries, since the “Diaspora” (70 D.C.) or even before in the third century B.C.. A community of such Calabrian Jews has survived in Rome continuously since then but Jews were expelled from Calabria in the first half of the 16th Century as Spanish rule brought the anti-Semitism of the inquisition to southern Italy.

The community was destroyed but they left many markers, including the Eastern method of farming.

Calabria’s citrons used to reach Jewish communities worldwide via wholesalers in Genoa — until some curious rabbis visited Calabria in the 1950s. Afterwards, the commerce re-started.

THE TERRITORY

Citron fields are it the background of San Michele Castle. These etrogim have been part of these lands for 2,000 years, given that, as said, the tradition tells us that they were brought here by Jews who established themselves in the area.

Diamante’s coast features a unique microclimate, where the warm air from the sea meets the cold air from the mountains, creating the ideal habitat for the delicate citron trees. Further, the region’s friable soil is very suitable for the species’s short roots.

The trees usually flower in June, and the fruit is ripe by the end of July, when farmers, rabbis and etrog merchants choose, cut and pack away the choicest ones.

While there are at least 12 varieties of citron that are kosher for Sukkot use, including numerous strains from Israel, it is a centuries-old Chabad-Lubavitch custom to make the blessing on one grown specifically in Calabria.

The Calabria etrog is often called a Yanover etrog—“Yanova” being the Yiddish expression for “Genoa”, from which the fruits were shipped by Jewish merchants for centuries.

The etrog-growing region in northern Calabria is enveloped between the Tyrrhenian Sea on one side and mountains on the other. Today, citron cultivation takes place in the Riviera dei Cedri, the area surrounding the town of Santa Maria del Cedro.

The Cedro della Riviera dei Cedri, or Calabria citron, grows nowhere else in the world but a portion of this southern coastal region of Italy.

The market became far more lucrative for the farmers when Jewish merchants began paying per single fruit (etrog). Over the years, small farms have mostly disappeared, making way for larger industrial operations of a few hundred trees. Although quality citrons deemed kosher are sold at a good price by farmers, the work is laborious, and it is precisely the ungrafted trees that can suffer the most during the year’s frost.

Citron growing dwindled generally but survived along the Riviera dei Cedri thanks to the favourable coastal micro-climate.

THE HARVEST OF THE RABBIS

Byron and D’Annunzio celebrated the citron in Calabria, but it was only saved from extinction, thanks to the Jewish tradition.

A Jewish delegation comes from Israel to Santa Maria del Cedro every year between July and August to choose the best fruit to be used in the holiday for the Jewish community.

Once the good fruit is found, the rabbis shows it to the worker who cuts it off leaving a piece of the stalk. Then the boxes are sealed and sent to the Lamezia Terme International Airport with a final destination Tel Aviv.

To be deemed kosher, an etrog cannot be grown on a tree that has been grafted (in order to defend the fruits from frost), which presents many difficulties for the citron farmer. In itself, the citron tree is weak, yet when grafted with the rootstock of another citrus tree, it is able to survive a tougher environment and produce genetically indistinguishable etrogim. As beautiful as they may be, these fruits are not kosher and cannot be used for the Jewish holiday.

FEATURES

The citron (citrus medica, botanical name) is a large, fragrant citrus fruit with a thick rind. Its center pulp is quite small and the wide pith is edible and not bitter like other citruses. In Italian, the word cedro means both citron and cedar tree, which may be confusing for those already familiar with the latter.

Traditionally, the principal culinary usage of the fruit has been in candied form, such as found in fruitcakes or the Christmas panettone. A the contrary, the citrons deemed kosher, an etrog, must not be on a plant that has been grafted. The fruit must be healthy, of a nice conical shape, green in color and with the crown intact.

Citrons sell for about 10 Euros apiece and inspectors usually examine between 10 and 100 individual pieces of fruit for each Etrog selected. Particularly beautiful and perfectly proportioned fruit can sell for hundreds of dollars.

THE REMAINING FRUIT

After the selection of the Etrog, the remaining fruit is left on the vine to mature and is then gathered for food products. Cedro candito or candied citron is the most common use.

The Diamante citrons are halved and placed in a brine solution in barrels for 69 days. At the point the rind takes on a crystalline appearance, the citron are removed and seeded. They are then placed in fresh water for several days to take the salt out. Finally, the fruit undergoes the candied phase in a sugar and water solution.

Other little gems from the Riviera of the Citron are destined for artisanal shops that prepare pastry. The delicate flavor of citron gelato or a pastry incorporating citron extract, the tang of citron marmalade or the fragrant sensation of the candied bits is routine on the Citron Riviera. The novel citrus is also featured in numerous savory dishes at local restaurants, in which chefs experiment with this ancient fruit to create new offerings for an ever-curious clientele.

In addition to candied fruit, the citron has inspired a host of edible and very drinkable creations, such as marmalade, syrup, liquors, extracts and cookies.

On top of the lovely flavor of the citron, the fruit’s health properties have been recognized for millennium, such as with regard to stomachaches, the gout, and also as a detoxifying and cleansing agent. The citron is widely used in perfume and cosmetics, as well.