Pictured left, two Navel oranges in the back, a blood orange front left, and a Valencia at far right.
When you live in an agricultural area, you tend to take fruits and vegetables for granted. We certainly do. And oranges might be the pivot for that since where I live, in Orange County, California (oranges, Orange County?) we used to be THE center of orange growing. For a long, long time. But now more of them are grown in Riverside County, the next county over (east) from Orange County. There’s still lots of rural land in Riverside County. Not so much here in Orange County.
When I first moved to Orange County back in 1975 (I’m a California native but hadn’t lived in Orange County before), many of the outlying roads were lined in orange trees. Thousands of acres of orange groves. Most owned by the Irvine Company, a huge – I mean gigantic – family-owned, many-square-miles area. Much of Orange County is still owned by the Irvine Company or by the Irvine family, mostly in the hilly areas about 10-15 miles inland. Piece by piece they sell off chunks, mostly developed into planned communities. And I nearly cried when the last orange grove bit the dust about ten years ago (I don’t think there are any commercial groves anymore). They wrote it up in our local paper. A grove they’d left there as “show” just so the locals wouldn’t get upset. But we did anyway. Real estate is worth more than any long-term orange grove, unfortunately.
So, it’s very appropriate that I write up a piece about oranges. Which comes from the book I’ve used before to share with you interesting tidbits about the growing of some fruits and vegetables. A book written by Russ Parsons, one of the writers/editors of the Los Angeles Times Food Section. The book: How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table
The orange we know today came about by a “circuitous route,” which began in China, where the first sweet oranges were cultivated. Spice traders brought the orange to Europe in the 1400’s. The Portuguese particularly loved them, and they even were known in the western world as “Portuguese oranges.” It’s believed that Columbus brought oranges to Haiti on his second voyage to the New World in 1493. From there they went to Central America and Mexico in the early 1500’s. And not long afterwards they came to Florida and California.
But, when the Spanish influence waned in the 1700’s, citrus growing in Florida declined. A new generation of farmers in Florida found mostly wild, old trees. But they were enterprising, and grafted newer varieties onto the old trees. In short order Florida became the leader in orange production, with California a distant cousin. Then two events happened: a new kind of orange, the Navel, was introduced in California in the mid 1870’s. Called a Washington Orange. The other event: in the winter of 1894 a bad cold snap hit the citrus orchards in Florida, destroying all the trees down to the ground. It took more than a decade for Florida to recoup, but in that interim, California, and the Navel orange, took hold. There are still oranges grown in Florida, but they’re nearly all juice oranges.
It was interesting to me that the Navel orange has been around for centuries (mostly in Mediterranean climates) and is known for the “bellybutton” at the flower end of the fruit. It’s actually another tiny orange embedded in the larger orange – ever noticed that when you cut open a particularly large Navel, there’s a kind of roundish thing that must be cut around or removed. It’s mostly skin, gnarly, bitter – that’s the tiny orange imbedded inside. But mostly Navels are seedless, easy to peel with firm flesh. When Florida growers tried to raise Navels they found the fruit coarse and granular. And when the fruit was juiced a compound called limonin turns it bitter within 30 minutes. Hence Florida concentrates on Valencia types.
In addition to the Navel and Valencia, though, there are others in the family: blood oranges (love those!), and the Cara Cara. The latter was a chance mutation found in 1976 on a Washington Navel in a Venezuelan orchard. The Cara Cara is a sweet low-acid orange whose flesh is a deep pinkish orange, closer, almost, to a ruby grapefruit. There are also kumquats (picture above from our garden). They’re probably not a true orange, but they sure look like them.
Russ Parsons included a recipe for one very simple dish, Oranges with Vanilla Syrup: Make a vanilla-scented syrup by boiling 1 1/2 cups water and 1 cup sugar with a split vanilla bean until the syrup is clear, about 10 minutes. Refrigerate. Peel the oranges and slice into a bowl, then pour the cold syrup over the top. Remove the vanilla bean. (Stick the vanilla bean, once dried, in your sugar canister where it will make vanilla-sugar). Serve the oranges with crispy cookies.
He included three full recipes in this chapter: (1) Orange and Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Walnuts; (2) Old-Fashioned Orange Cake; and (3) Candied Orange Peel.
I do have a lot of orange recipes, this being an orange mecca here. I had to go look and see what I did have. All these recipes include more than just the juice or zest – either the flesh and/or the peel and juice.
Chicken, Arugula, Corn & Parmigiano Salad (contains a salad dressing using whole oranges)
Cranberry Relish (made with fresh cranberries and whole oranges, including the skin)
Poached Kumquats and Asian Pears in Vanilla Scented Syrup
Pecan-Crusted Chicken with Orange-Rosemary Sauce
Roast Pork Tenderloin with Onion Orange Pan Sauce
Cornish Game Hen (or Chicken Breast) Salad
Orange Jalapeno Vinaigrette
Watercress, Belgian Endive Salad with Black Olive Vinaigrette
Tangerine Vinaigrette
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A year ago: Southwestern Squash & Corn
Two years ago: Mustard & Herb Chicken
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