This week at the farm...

In your box this week….

• Grey: Red Bartlett Pears, Hon-eycrisp Apples, Akane Apples, Flavor Queen Pluots, Hosui Asian Pears & Melons

• Blue: Red Bartlett Pears, Hon-eycrisp Apples, Akane Apples, Flavor Queen Pluots, Hosui Asian Pears & Melons

• Veggie Boost: Sweet Peppers, Tomatoes & Eggplant

This Week at the Farm 1

Akane & Honeycrisp Apples 2

Melons 2

Flavor Queen Pluots 3

Coming soon! & Trivia 3

Recipes! 4

Inside this issue:

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Week 11, 2016

September 6th

Asian pears (Pyrus pyrifolia) are indigenous to China and have been culti-vated there for nearly 4,000 years. Asian pears are also known as “sand pears” or Nashi (the Japanese word for pear). Eastern and central China are still flourishing Asian Pear growing regions. Japan began growing crunchy pears since the 7th century.

In the States, the first record of growing a “sand pear” was in New York in 1820. Chinese workers in California’s Gold Rush planted seeds along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Later, Japanese immigrants brought cuttings of superior varieties to the region.

California is the chief growing region for Asian Pears in the United States. We have three Asian Pear varieties—Hosui, 20th Century & Olympic—

growing on about an acre of orchard land.

Hosui:

These russet-brown skinned Asian Pears are caramel-sweet with a slightly grainy texture to their flesh. Eat them when they are crisp, but have a golden pallor to their skin. If their skin is still dark (more olive than golden), let them sit on your counter to ripen.

Hosui Asian Pears

Now that all of our pear varieties are harvested, we have turned our atten-tion to apples, Asian pears, and pluots! Each week he harvest the red-dest Honeycrisp apples and place them in our conditioning coolers. We are keeping an eye on our other apple varieties, too, and have been har-vesting Akane & Gala for markets each week. Jonagolds are starting to “color up” with their red stripes becoming more vibrant, an indication of ripeness. Look for them soon :)

In Woodinville we are wrapping up the final push of our fall transplants, harvesting sweet corn, and keeping a close eye on our winter squash vari-eties. We should be picking winter squash either this week or next! Ready or not, fall is here!

Page 2

Akane Apples

T ONNE MA KER CSA

Melons!

This week everyone as a yellow-skinned, white-

fleshed honeydew in their boxes known as a Ca-nary Melon. Its skin should be bright, sunshine yel-low before you eat it. You can keep your melon on your counter until the color deepens a bit and it be-gins to perfume your kitchen, or you can keep it in your fridge to prolong the ripening time (if you have lots of other fruit to eat before you want to dive in to your melon!).

Canary melons are one of our sweetest melons and are a customer favorite at markets, too.

Akane is a Jonathan and Worcester Pearmin (Gala strain) cross. Akane has cream-colored, mahogany-striped skin and brilliant white flesh. Akane straddles the tart-sweet line brilliantly and seems to appeal to those who prefer tart and those who prefer sweet. It is the perfect size for school lunches—kids tend to gravitate toward Akanes (they’re so pretty!). Akane apples are also fun to bake with, especially if you leave the red skins on as they turn apple sauce and pie filling pink!

We first planted Honeycrisp in 1994 and brought them to the fresh market before they were the “it” apple they are now. I remember selling them out of our old pickup truck and trail-er at the University District Farmer’s Market back in the fall of 1999—back when we had time to shine each apple before we set it out on display in a wooden box! My mom mailed me boxes of Honeycrisp ap-ples my freshman year of college in Iowa—much to my roommate’s delight :)

Honeycrisp is a cross between a Macoun and a Honeygold. While the initial crossing occurred in 1960, the variety was not released for commercial growers to purchase until 1991. Honeycrisp is now one of the most popular apples and is grown all over the United States. Unlike most of the new apple varieties, Honeycrisp was not a club apple (one that a grower has to buy into a club in order to plant the trees). As a result, some Honeycrisp apples on the market are growing in regions where their flavors are not as developed as they should be. Fortunately for us, the north slope of the Frenchman Hills seems to be a perfect match with the preferred climate for Hon-eycrisp! We hope you enjoy Honeycrisp as much as we do!

Honeycrisp

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What’s in season next?

• Gala Apples

• Winter Squash

• Bosc Pears

• D’anjou Pears

• Sonata Apples

• Orin Apples

• Empire Apples

• Fuji Apples

• Braeburn Apples

Flavor Queen Pluots

We currently have three varieties of this crop and one of them is one of the latest fruit to be harvested in the orchard. Their flowers are always crepe paper-like and stunning in their beauty, especially with their red & black stamens and their bronze first leaves.

(answer on page 4)

Which crop is it?

Flavor Queen is one of our top pluot varieties and is easily identifiable by its spring-green to yellow skin color (most of the other pluots are red or purple). Flavor Queen is easily the sweetest of the pluots with a Brix level of 18.5+. Brix is a measurement of the sugar content of a fruit and is often used to determine when to harvest crops like cherries, peaches, plums and even tomatoes.

Flavor Queen’s parentage includes a first generation cross between the Mariposa Plum and a seedling plum with the identifier of 4G1180 and the pollen from a cross of the Red Beaut Plum and an unnamed apricot variety.

Flavor Queens are best when their skin has a yellow glow to them, so leave them on your counter or keep an eye on them in your fridge while they continue to ripen.

Summer Plum Crostada

Food and Wine, August 2012, Eugenia Bone

Ingredients: 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

½ cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling

¼ tsp salt 1 stick cold unsalted butter, cubed and chilled

¼ cup ice water 1 T cornstarch

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp finely grated orange zest 1lb firm-but-ripe plums, pitted and cut into eighths (or 1/4” wedges if using pluots instead of Italian Prune Plums) 1 large egg yolk mixed with 1 T of water

Answer: Asian Pears

Directions: In a food processor, add the 1 ¼ C of flour, 2T of sugar and the salt and pulse to combine. Add the butter

and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle on the ice water and pulse until the dough just barely comes together. Gather the dough and pat it into a disk. Wrap the dough in plastic and refrig-erate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 and position a rack in the lower third. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Working on a lightly floured surface, roll out the disk of dough to a 12-inch round; transfer to the baking sheet. Chill the dough until firm. 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the remaining 1/3 C plus 2T of sugar with the cornstarch, cinnamon and or-ange zest. Add the plums and toss well. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is mostly dis-solved, about 15 mins.

Arrange the fruit in the center of the dough, leaving a 1 ½ inch border all around. Fold the edge of the dough up and over the plums. Brush the rim with the egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake the crostata for about 50 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender and bubbling. Let the crostata cool on the baking sheet for 30 mins, then cut into wedges and serve.

Make ahead: the pastry disk can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Using an apple corer or a small spoon, cut out the core from the bottom of each pear (leaving a little of the core at the top will help keep stem attached). Use the spoon to enlarge each cavi-ty to hold 2 Tbsp filling. In a small bowl, stir together the chopped and ground almonds, sugar, lemon zest, and egg white. Divide the mixture evenly among the pears, pressing it firmly into the cavities. Stand the pears in a shallow baking dish, cutting slices from the bottoms, if necessary, so that they stand upright. Driz-zle with the maple syrup. Cover tightly with foil and bake until the pars are easily pierced with a skewer, about 1 hour. Transfer the pears to plates, spoon the cooking syrup on top, and serve.

From Williams Sonoma’s Dessert of the Day: 365 Recipes for Every Day of the Year Cookbook, p216

Baked Stuffed Pears

Ingredients:

4 green-skinned pears, stems intact

1/2 cup whole almonds, toasted and chopped

1/2 cup ground almonds

2 Tbsp firmly packed light brown sugar

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon

1 large egg white

1/2 cup maple syrup