Adventures in citrus

[starlady]

I went to the Setagaya Boroichi both times it was held this past lunar year (i.e. December and January), and the first time round I met a lady selling huge yuzu in plastic containers for hella cheap, particularly considering the price of fruit in this country. We had a conversation about how it was actually possible for yuzu to get within striking range of the size of cultivated oranges, which I hadn't known, and what one does with them when they're that big--one of her suggestions which I regretfully couldn't take was to poke holes in it, as with a potato before microwaving, and put it in the bath. I don't have a bath. What I wound up doing was attempting to make ponzu with them, only to find that I'd let them go a bit too long and they were mostly seeds anyway, so my juice yield was rather low even though the apartment smelled delicious. (Yuzu sort of tastes like lemon and juniper, except delicious.) Being a Kyotoite at heart, I love me some yudofu, and I ate the ponzu with that. It was great.

One of my walks to my train station takes me past two trees that I have always assumed to be either yuzu (big ones) or tachibana, another variety of citrus. Last week I saw a huge fruit lying on the ground on the road side of the household wall, and without pausing too much to think about it, I scooped it off the ground and into my bag. I assumed it was a big yuzu and made the same preparations for yudofu, only to find when I cut into it tonight that it was clearly much more like an orange…except wildly bitter. Further googling has convinced me that this is probably a hassaku, which I have never heard of before, much less eaten. With soy sauce and mirin, it's not too bad, though my froofy seasonal ponzu from the fancy store in Tokyo Midtown is definitely better balanced as a sauce. Still, all in all, I think this is a win.

Comments

[torachan]

I had never heard of hassaku until recently, but last year there was a hassaku flavored ramune that we were selling for a while.

[starlady]

This was a household tree, so presumably people ate them, but the thing was so bitter, way more than a grapefruit. Not sure how that would work in a ramune.

[thistleingrey]

Cool.
I wonder occasionally whether citrus came to those islands with Buddhism (overland most of the way) or rice/boat trade (via Taiwan). (Anyone know?)

[starlady]

Wikipedia says most Japanese citrus is from China, so the answer is probably yes. It looks like shikwasa is the most common exception to that; it's s native to Okinawa and Taiwan.

[thistleingrey]

Cool. Ultimately, most/all citrus is from the Indian subcontinent, IIRC, hence the Buddhism possibility (i.e., if it hadn't come earlier via trade).