My first grapes of the year
"Grapes can be eaten fresh as table grapes or they can be used for making wine, jam, juice, jelly, grape seed extract, raisins, vinegar, and grape seed oil." Wikipedia
AND NOW YOU CAN WEAR THEM TOO!
When I was a child grapes were either something really special to take to somebody who was ill or something special to be eaten at Christmas. Now that I live in Australia, from where most of our grapes came back then, grapes are a very common and abundant fruit. And today I ate my first ones of the season. Well I'm not sure that is totally true - I may have had some before Christmas but I don't think they were quite as nice - or probably quite as cheap. I fancied a small snack and saw the grapes that had been washed sitting in the colander and so I took a small bunch and ate them. They are truly one of those moresome things aren't they? You start eating them and you can't stop.
"You cannot eat a cluster of grapes at once, but it is very easy if you eat them one by one." Jacques Roumain
"My favorite fruit is grapes. Because with grapes, you always get another chance. 'Cause, you know, if you have a crappy apple or a peach, you're stuck with that crappy piece of fruit. But if you have a crappy grape, no problem - just move on to the next. 'Grapes: The Fruit of Hope." Demetri Martin
Like lots of those Mediterranean foods you can do a whole lot of things with them. They are very ancient and because yeast grew naturally on them and the fruit fermented, alcohol, and specifically wine, was discovered. But I'm not talking about wine here - I'm talking about table grapes - the ones you eat. And what you can do with them besides eat them au naturel. And that includes doing things with the things you produce from grapes like jam, jelly, oil and vinegar.
"Peel me a grape" is one of those phrases one uses to show ultimate idleness and wealth I guess. I once did. In my set of Robert Carrier Cookery Cards for dessert there was a grape tart. And guess what - you had to peel them first. You covered the top of the tart with grapes, so that's quite a lot of grapes. It was not an enjoyable or easy process and not one I ever plan to repeat. I was in love and ambitious. Now I'm just lazy.
So I started looking for some slightly unusual things to do with them. And turned up a few, including leather - yes leather you wear and also the fruit leathers you eat. I have to tell you - this blog turns up endlessly fascinating things. And I guess the most unusual is this:
Yes this is a type of leather-like material that is made from the by-products of making wine - the must, the stalks, the skins, the marc. In the words of its makers - an Italian company called Vegea:
"VEGEA is a biomaterial obtained from the processing of the lignocellulose and oils contained in grape marc: a totally vegetal raw material consisting of the grape skins, stalks and seeds derived from the wine production."
I'm not enamoured of their logo which was plastered on everything but the idea is amazing is it not? "Sustainable fashion" are the words on their logo and no doubt it is. No doubt it is also hugely expensive - but it has to be admired. They won an award from H&M for sustainable fashion in 2016. And who knew I would find this when I was talking about grapes as food?
For what I was actually looking for was a fruit leather made from grapes. I discovered fruit leathers in one of my River Cottage books - the one on preserves. Basically you cook the fruit to a very thick purée, spread it out on a tray and dry it in the oven. Then you have a sheet of concentrated chewiness. Here is one recipe that does not include any other ingredients at all, and it includes a few tips on the things to avoid. It's on a site called Real Mom Nutrition. I confess it's something I have yet to try - but then I don't have children whose lunch boxes I need to fill with tempting yet nutritious things.
Number two slightly unusual grape thing is pickled grapes. Well like the fruit leathers you can pickle just about everything. I brought out some pickled cherries I had tucked away in my store cupboard the other day for our film society barbecue - to serve with the cheese course, and they seemed to go down a treat. I first found pickled grapes in a recipe in my database as an accompaniment to a Chocolate and Hazelnut Fondant. It came from delicious but a long time ago and so I couldn't find it on the net, but I found this which was so similar that you would have to think that one or the other had copied the other. But I'm guessing pickled grapes would go well with any number of things - a cheese platter, an antipasti platter ...
"A small bowl of pickled grapes and another of cornichons are a well-matched pair with an aperitif. The grapes are sweet with a shade of sour and the cornichons–the reverse. Aperitifs are anticipatory and whatever goes with them should be too. Otherwise, the good things that follow lose their edge. Pickled grapes will put an edge on an appetite without dampening it." Diplomatic Kitchen
You can find any number of recipes on the net. Most of them seem to use black grapes, but some used white ones.
Or try roasting them. I found quite a few recipes for roasted this and that with some grapes thrown in with vegetables to accompany - chicken and sausages seemed to be the main contenders. But you can just roast them and eat them or serve them with something sweet - like ice-cream or - as Nigel Slater suggests with a cold rice pudding.
I also saw a recipe for roasted grapes with balsamic vinegar so obviously you can do a savoury version too. And serve them instead of the pickled ones but in the same way.
Then you can freeze them as they are and eat them as little icy morsels of delight, or put the frozen ones in a smoothie - or your child's lunch box. They might still be frozen by lunchtime - at least they will be cold. You just remove them from the stalks and freeze them in a bag - although do you really have to remove the stalks?
And interestingly not one of these recipes suggested peeling them. I suspect it's an old-fashioned thing. Although when I started looking at recipes for jam a few of them suggested peeling them. Why? You don't peel plums or apricots, or anything else really so why would you peel grapes. One lady didn't peel them but she did blend them when they had cooked. Again - why?
There are classic grape recipes like Chicken Véronique, but I'm not going into them here. I'm also not going to go into what you can do with vinegar, or jam, or jelly. For now I'm just going to eat them - after dinner.
"They taste, curiously, of Christmas." Nigel Slater
POSTSCRIPT: 'The grapes of wrath' - now what on earth does that actually mean?
