Produce Guide - F

Feijoas

The Feijoa is also called the pineapple guava, which, despite its inaccuracy, is a fairly apt description of this exotic's sweet flavour, providing you've tasted both a guava and a pineapple. When I cut open a feijoa, which is highly aromatic as well as flavourful, I think of spruce, strawberries, pears, and wintergreen. In appearance, the feijoa looks a bit like an elongated kiwi, but with a bumpy, lime-green skin. Inside, the flesh is soft-firm, beige and slightly granular, surrounding a small cavity filled with jelly and tiny, edible seeds.

Although this fruit is native to South America, where it grows on ever-green trees at higher altitudes, it is now primarily cultivated in New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, California. Like the kiwi, the feijoa is picked unripe, which makes it a good export fruit. We find it in Canadian markets from March through June, and sometimes again during the autumn months.

Feijoas should smell fragrant, and when ripe be about as tender as a plum. Don't try them before they ripen, as the flesh will make your mouth pucker. Instead, leave them on a countertop or in a paper bag with an apple for a few days. They can be refrigerated when ripe, or puréed and frozen. If puréeing for use in a recipe, simply slice in half and scoop out the flesh, seeds and all. Otherwise, peel the skin and slice across in rings. Puréed feijoa makes a beautiful sorbet, smoothie, mousse, or sauce. The sliced fruit is terrific in salads, and can go either way, sweet or savoury. Combine feijoa with strawberries, oranges, and bananas for a fine fruit cup (even better with some grated fresh coconut), or toss it with avocado and tart salad greens for a starter. In countries where it is cultivated (and cheap), the fruit features in chutneys, jellies, and jams. However, I think my favourite way of eating a feijoa is simply to slice it lengthways as you would an avocado, put a dab of cream cheese in the centre, and eat it out of the shell.

Fennel

Fennel looks a bit like fat celery; its thick, pale, broad stalks are braided together, forming a firm white bulb at the base with delicate, feathery greens sprouting from the top. Commonly used in both sweet and savoury Mediterranean dishes, fennel (finocchio in Italian) has a subtle licorice flavour and decided crunch. Although fennel is distinctive in appearance and flavour, there is some ambiguity over its name. Some believe that fennel and anise are the same creature, others insist that fennel is a vegetable and anise a herb, and still others think that the bulb is called fennel and its fern-like fronds are called anise. I'm sure that I'll get a few letters and phone calls on this one, but for the record: fennel - bulb and feathers included - is the vegetable. It is sometimes known as Florentine fennel, probably to distinguish it from common fennel, which has no bulb and is grown both as a fresh herb and for its anise-flavoured seeds. Anise is a different herb altogether, grown for its seed (aniseed), which is used to flavour Pernod, Sambuca, and ouzo. Its leaves are also edible, but the plant is not commonly cultivated for the market-place. Part of the confusion is that the English tend to call the vegetable, fennel, by the name of its flavour, anise.

Fiddleheads

Fifteen years ago, when I opened my first fruit and veg stall in the Saint John City Market, two things happened that let me know spring was on its way. The first was that I was able to take off my fur hat and stop using a blow-dryer to keep the exotic fruits from taking a chill. The second was that more and more people started asking when the fiddleheads were due. It didn't take me long to figure out that they weren't talking about an itinerant string quartet. And when the fiddleheads did arrive, I couldn't unpack them fast enough.

In a world where the word "seasonal" no longer has any real meaning - with mandarin oranges available in June and asparagus on our Christmas menus - fiddleheads are one of the few vegetables that make us wait. Commercial cultivation of fiddleheads never got off the ground, which is where these delicacies grow. They're found in the wild along shady riverbanks and flood plains as far south as Virginia, and northwards to Newfoundland; they grow sparsely on the prairies and profusely in British Columbia. But the Maritimes are the true spiritual home of the fiddlehead, and it was surely a New Brunswick fiddler who coined the name.

Figs

When most Canadians talk about figs, they're referring to the dried treats that turn up on fruit and nut platters at Christmas, along with dates and dried apricots. But unlike dates, whose low moisture content means that the fresh and semi-dried varieties aren't wildly different, fresh and dried figs are poles apart. Fresh figs are plump and juicy and not nearly as sweet as dried figs.

We tend to think of figs as Italian, but the fig tree is actually native to Turkey, and some of the best figs - Smyrna figs - still come from there, as well as from Greece. However, California has become North America's largest fig supplier, producing a number of famous varieties. The Calimyrna (same as the Smyrna) is large, golden or pale amber in colour both inside and out, with a pleasing nutty flavour. The Mission fig, also called the Franciscana, is perhaps the most familiar. A thin, deep purple (almost black) skin encases a brilliant red interior. The Mission's texture is coarser than the Calimyrna's, but its flavour is strong and sweet. Sometimes we see an early burst of figs into the Canadian market in late June and July, but the big season for fresh figs is the fall. At Christmas, figs are occasionally imported from Brazil, but although I've eaten fabulous figs in South America, they pick them underripe for export, and so they just aren't as good as figs in season.

Figs, like apricots, need kid-glove handling. Because they are mostly picked already ripe, they sometimes arrive at the shops damaged. When choosing figs, look for tender fruit with unbroken skins. Check the open, blossom end of the fruit for the "honey of the fig." This is a natural syrup that begins to ooze from the fig when it gets to the perfect state of ripeness. Unripe figs may leak a milky substance, and should be left at room temperature to soften. Store ripe figs in the fridge for a day or two, but let them sit in a sunny window for an hour before serving, as the flavour is best brought out by a little warmth.

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