Lessons learned

Tyler Cowen offers the most important lesson from BloggingChefs: Marginal Revolution: Strange Bloggingheads episodes.

If there is one lesson, it is taken from the cooking of Megan: for most of you frozen cherries will, for cooking, be tastier than non-frozen cherries which in fact are not so fresh at all.

This is actually a very important lesson. Unless you are shopping at farmstands, when it comes to berries, cherries, or peaches, buy frozen for cooking. The difference in texture will not matter, and the difference in flavor is profound. Frozen fruit is picked ripe and flash frozen near the farm, whereas "fresh" fruit is picked while green (the better to survive transnational shipping) and then ripened through a combination of time and chemical assistance. The result, as you've probably noticed, is thoroughly unsatisfying. This is also why you should use canned tomatoes for your soups and sauces in the winter; indeed, any frozen vegetable will make better soup than fresh unless it is in season.

The biggest lesson I took away from this year's BloggingChefs was: don't rewrite your menu from scratch at 10 am the day of the cookoff.

Comments

Or you could cook seasonally and look forward to the coming of each wave of the harvest, while enjoying home canned stews and sauces all winter.

Posted by Rob Lyman | February 14, 2008 3:26 PM

Indeed. If you can overlook the texture issues with frozen fruit, they are quite tasty uncooked- and frozen strawberries, for example, can be eaten half-thawed. Very tasty.

Posted by Yancey Ward | February 14, 2008 3:31 PM

Fresh tomatoes, even in season, are often poor. Local supermarkets have made significant efforts to get good local produce on the shelves in the DC area, but the tomatoes are still not up to snuff. Vine ripened tomatoes are probably the hardest thing to get to market en mass without damaging them. Farmer's markets, stands and the occasional truck with guys in the back are the way to go.

Posted by Njorl | February 14, 2008 3:50 PM

Although, if you can go and pick peaches or cherries yourself there is absolutely nothing that compares to the taste of fruit picked from the tree seconds earlier. It's worth a weekend drive in August.

Posted by citizen (World) | February 15, 2008 1:54 PM

I've never understood why is is nearly impossible to get tomatoes that have great taste and texture.

Almost all of the fresh tomatoes I buy are tasteless. I've reconciled myself to only buying them in the late Summer and early Fall, but even then it's a dicey proposition. Does anyone have any tips for getting nice ones, aside from buying them at farmstands, as Njorl suggested?

Posted by larry | February 15, 2008 3:32 PM

Larry, you answered your own question: The only tomatoes worth eating are grown within 100 miles of where you live. When no such are available, don't buy fresh tomatoes. Period. The way to be sure of what you are getting is to buy at the farmers' markets.

My lunch spot, the Bread Line in Washington, has a tomato-intensive menu from July through October. The rest of the year it serves no tomatoes (except cherry tomatoes).

Posted by roac | February 15, 2008 4:22 PM

"Does anyone have any tips for getting nice ones, aside from buying them at farmstands"
-- I surprised no one has mentioned this tip: Grow the tomatoes in your backyard, let them ripen completely & eat at once. I have a tray of 1" high tomato seedlings under a grow light on my shelf now. In 3 months they go into my backyard garden. Around early August some tomatoes will be ready.

Posted by tresho | February 16, 2008 3:15 AM

Yeah, even Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen came down firmly on the side of canned tomatoes, even saying that good canned tomoatoes were competitive with ones you buy at the peak of the season. They recommended Muir Glen, which I can heartily agree with.

The same thing goes for supermarket seafood unless you live near where it's caught, by the way.

Posted by Nate | February 16, 2008 6:02 PM

Yeah, even Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen came down firmly on the side of canned tomatoes, even saying that good canned tomatoes were competitive with ones you buy at the peak of the season. They recommended Muir Glen, which I can heartily agree with.

The same thing goes for supermarket seafood unless you live near where it's caught, by the way.

Posted by Nate | February 16, 2008 6:02 PM