Have you ever wondered why the same produce – especially fruit – never seems to taste the same each year?
Various factors contribute to this, but much of it is do with the growing environment. Drought years – like this past season – often produce incredible fruiting crops. In years such as this, growers do not have to contend with the dampness that causes fungal diseases and fruit splitting; they just need enough water to start fruit off and keep it going.
The other major factor to bear in mind is variety selection. We may think fruit grows in a natural state – similar to the way it would grow left to its own devices – but this is far from the truth. With with modern farming methods we have managed to cultivate fruit varieties selected for certain characteristics – sweetness, disease resistance, colour and shape and so on.
Take for instance Japanese muskmelon varieties sold in fruit emporiums and high-end markets and famed for their elevated status amongst fruit. The Japanese are champion gift-givers, and this fruit is thought of as the ultimate present. They are grown in customised glass houses, situated in areas exposed to the longest daylight hours, and to top it off, the only fruits that make it to market are often a single fruit harvested from one vine. Yes, that’s one melon per vine.
Three is the magic number but one is the only one that is picked, the other two are kept for seed. A typical vine usually grows seven to 10 melons over its season. This practice is not dissimilar to the best restaurants that serve soufflé, where two or three are made when one is ordered, just in case it fails to rise.
In Australia, we can’t rival the one-fruit-per-vine growing methods, but our access to interesting melon cultivars is improving, as migrant farming populations grow far-flung varieties from regions ranging from Africa to Southern Asia, such as the piel de sapo, gris de rennes and ha’ogen.
These fruits, if grown naturally, are not good stored. You can taste the stored ones straight away, they either have no flavour or they develop an acetone taste akin to nail varnish.
But when you get a good melon, it is like hitting a windfall. And right now is the time.
Ask your fruit grocer where the melons are grown. Calculate the distance, and if they’ve come further than 1000km then chances are, they were picked underripe to get to you.
If melons were harvested at the point of almost ripeness, you should be able to smell them straight away. The skin can look stretched or opaque, the ribbing will be further apart and the fruit should weigh heavy in your hand.
Rock melon varieties fair slightly better when picked underripe, due to their protective netted skin, which shields them as they grow in the field and during transportation. They can sit on your kitchen bench until their perfume develops.
If you open a melon and it is a dud, sadly there is no salvaging it – it won’t ripen further. So do as the Thais do and turn it into a steamed melon pudding, for which you’ll find the recipe below. It is quite delicious – especially if you have pandan leaves and coconut cream drizzle to gussy it up.
If you’ve cut one that is merely meh, you can improve it exponentially by wrapping prosciutto around it, or slicing it up and serving it in a salad with burrata. The old adage that you can improve most things with bacon and fat is in this case true!
And if you have hit the jackpot and managed to find yourself an ambrosial melon, do nothing to it. Eat it as is … maybe with a little salt.
Khanom dtaeng – steamed melon and grated coconut cakes
1 muskmelon approx 500g, deseeded, peeled and cut into small pieces
250g rice flour
150g either tapioca/arrowroot/cassava flour, any of these flours will work
100g sugar
1tsp sea salt
700g coconut milk
2 knotted pandan leaves, smacked and knotted
1½ cups packed grated mature coconut
Place muskmelon, sugar, salt and pandan into a mixing bowl and let it sit to macerate for a couple of hours, covered with a tea towel on the kitchen bench.
After a couple of hours, add the rice flour and tapioca (or other flour) and, using your hands, mix and mush all the ingredients until it is a lovely slippery mess. Make sure to keep the pandan leaves intact, as you will need to take out the leaves in the steaming process.
Add the coconut milk and mix until well incorporated then pass through a sieve. Pour into a loaf pan, or if you are feeling fancy line some muffin tins with ducasse banana leaves and pour the mixture into those.
Scatter with grated mature coconuts and steam for 20-30 minutes until the pudding is slightly firm, but not too firm otherwise it will be too bouncy and chewy.
The texture should be yielding and the fragrance out of this world.
