Winter produce is arriving at your farmers’ market. Root vegetables, winter greens and much more can be found, but right now citrus is filling up the stalls with bright, sunny colors. Oranges and tangerines, mandarins and grapefruit, lemons and limes are at their best during the winter months, full of juice, sweetness, and nutrition. You can’t find fresher produce than at your farmers’ market, where the growers bring what they harvest locally.
Winter in California is synonymous with citrus. Long the most prolific producer of oranges, the state grows 90 percent of the fresh-to-market citrus in the United States. The Franciscan missionaries were the first to plant Mediterranean varieties of citrus here. In the mid- to late 1800s, lemon, lime and orange trees thrived in what is now downtown Los Angeles. At that time, it was known as the “other” California Gold Rush.
In the early 20th century, Southern California was the epicenter, with acre after acre of citrus as far as the eye could see. The fields were filled with lemons, oranges and grapefruit, that is until housing and other development became a more lucrative “crop.”
Citrus continues to grow in California, but now is centered in Ventura County, the Central Valley and the state’s northern counties. Oranges grow on the flat open lands of the Central Valley. Mandarins and tangerines grow along the foothills of the Sierra mountains. Abundant lemon trees fill the rolling hillsides of inland Ventura County. Smaller farms across the state grow wonderful specialty citrus such as makrut limes, Golden Nugget tangerines, kumquats, pomelos, blood oranges, tangelos and other up-and-coming varieties.
At the Concord Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays you can find Diaz Farms coming to us from Fowler in the Central Valley, with bags of big navel oranges, easy-peel Satsuma mandarins, sweet Cara Cara oranges and tart lemons. J&J Farms of Hughson, also from the Central Valley, brings fantastic pink grapefruit, navel and valencia oranges, white pomelos and satsuma and murcott mandarins.
Debra Morris is a promotions coordinator for the Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market Association and writes the Time Is Ripe column. Contact her at debramorris@pcfma.com.
Recipe: Fennel Citrus Salad
ingredients
One medium bulb of fennel
Two Cara Cara oranges
One medium red onion, pickled if you have it
One medium bulb fennel
¼ cup chopped (roasted, salted) pistachios
One lemon
Salt and pepper
½ cup champagne vinegar
Olive oil
instructions
Remove fronds from fennel so that no spears protrude from the root. Cut off the base, then slice down the center of the root to expose the heart. Remove the heart. After removing, slice the bulb. Toss with lemon juice and salt and set aside.
Segment oranges: Slice off the top and bottom of the orange and set it on its end on a cutting board. Then slice the skin off with a knife, moving from top to bottom, so that the orange segments are exposed without an outer layer of pith (the white substance between the peel and the flesh). Carefully holding the orange in your hand, cut into the orange with a sharp knife using two cuts per segment. This way, your segments do not have any pith on them. Squeeze the juice from the heart of the orange and reserve for dressing.
Toss orange and fennel together with onion and salt. Add a splash of orange juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Finish with pistachios on top.
— recipe from PCFMA Cookin’ the Market chef Marisa Ades