Soggy Citrus and All

All I know is that by the time the new year started out all fresh-faced and giggly, the ground was already 100% saturated, and since then, we have had one huge storm after the other, all of them lined up across the Atlantic waiting their turn. No one I’ve spoken to, no matter how old they might be, can remember a winter quite like this one. Having said that, we’ve been lucky so far in that we haven’t been flooded (we are not near a river, and our house is situated on a ridge above a valley), and our relatively new roof, chimney pots and solar panels withstood the hurricane force winds of early February. Fingers crossed for the rest of the winter.

Citrus casualties

One of the little-noticed casualties of all the wet and misery has been our citrus crop – oranges, tangerines, lemons and limes. The abundant moisture has made all the fruit very juicy, but the lack of sunlight means they haven’t matured properly. The heavy, juice-laden fruits just plop from the trees and lie there, rotting unless we go pick them up. Crates of tangerines. Buckets of limes and lemons. Wheelbarrows of oranges. Half the tangerines and oranges are bitter to taste as the lack of sun means they haven’t sweetened, so their use is thus limited, and though I quite like sharp citrus flavours, these are a bit too much au naturel.

Then there are the chu chu (or do you prefer xu xu?) They grow vine-like, and the wet weather has caused a glut of them too – all heavy and water-laden and lying on the ground, decomposing sullenly instead of waiting patiently on the vine to be plucked when required. Chu chus have a very bland flavour of their own, but they make excellent additions to soups and the like, so every soup and stew we’ve had for the past few months has been overfilled with stewed versions of this edible gourd. Nevertheless, the supply seems endless. We needed a plan to deal with the mountains of fruit and veg which, if left to their own devices, would cover us and smother us.

Inevitable dilemma

I faced the inevitable dilemma with resilience and fortitude: how to combine the gourd and the citrus in a way that was both pleasing and genuinely welcome. Jam was more or less excluded, as chu chu contains so much water that almost no amount of pectin will allow it to set, as I found out from experience. As for those citrinos, we’ve each been eating three or four after lunch and dinner ever since the first half ton of tangerines landed on the ground with a thump, but we don’t seem to be making much of a dent in the stock. Neighbours don’t want them, of course, as they are facing similar problems, and we’ve already filled both freezers up to the brim with freshly squeezed fruit juice (I knew that massive collection of litre-sized yoghurt pots I’d assembled would come in handy one day). I’ve worked on cunning culinary experiments well into the darkened nights as the rain and wind lashed outside, slaving over a hot stove when the power was on and over a cold one when it was off, and finally, I came up with a winner.

This required a large saucepan, our trusty varinha mágica, a juicer, an assortment of chu chu, a pile of oranges and limes, some leftover dried fruit from Christmas (a box of slowly desiccating dates did very well), some mandioca flour and some almond flour. The chu chu needed cooking first, of course, which I did with minimal water, dried fruit, and some orange peel. I stirred the cauldron from time to time, cackling when I thought it appropriate, and our two black cats purred with suggested spells and charms. Then the chu chu/fruit mixture got thoroughly blitzed. The fruit was juiced and added to the cooling mess along with the flours, which were stirred in thoroughly until it got quite sticky and gooey. When it had cooled down, it was, though I say it myself, a triumph of culinary serendipity, and I commend it to any passing Michelin-starred chef.

Of course, it hardly shifts the mountain of produce stacking up outside the kitchen, and so far, I note a dearth of Michelin-starred chefs popping by for supplies. Most puzzling. Meanwhile, out in the fields, the fruit keeps falling to the ground, so we must once again put on rubber boots, button up our rain gear, pull the hood firmly over our noses, and wade through hectares of mud to fill another half dozen buckets. Sigh.