California is an amazing place on many levels. The most primal, though, is that for much of the year you can sit under a tree and literally have food fall into your lap. This paradisaical arrangement, in Punam’s and my particular case, has given rise to the question “what should we do with N pounds of fruit, as N approaches infinity, where fruit ∈ {plum, lemon, pear, apple, apricot, tangerine}?”
A plethora
To date, we have only really had to deal with the plums and the lemons. The plethora of plums mostly became jam; we harvested something near 15 kilos* of whole plum fruit this year (from one tree!) and made many gallons of extraordinarily tasty jam. Through the two weeks of productive plum harvest, I enjoyed walking into the shade of the tree, pulling off a low-hanging fruit, and washing it in our outdoor sink, then eating it with syrup-dripping gusto… when plums were domesticated, that is what our ancestors had in mind. No store-bought plum can ever hope to compete with one eaten thirty seconds and twenty feet away from the tree it grew on. It’s revelatory.The lemons? Our lemon tree yields more than we can use, perhaps a dozen a week all summer. Many have gone into drinks, food, and even decoration. In particular, I have had occasion to experiment with substituting lemons into margaritas, in the place of the usual limes. We normally perceive lemons as significantly more sour than limes, thus necessitating an Amateur Science Hour!
I started with a lime-based, commercial, margarita recipe: juice of half a lime, amounting to about two parts; one part (.5 fl oz, the top of my small cocktail shaker) Triple Sec, three parts tequila — note the prominence of the tequila in this recipe, which begs for at least a reasonable quality tequila. I added the ingredients to a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shook until the temperature of the whole shaker was uniformly cold and the corners of the ice cubes had worn away, based on the sound the made as they bounced off the shaker (thanks to Jeff at Sarticious for the tip). I then poured the resuting mixture through the shaker’s strainer top into a salted glass.
I tried this recipe with two widely-available tequilas: Cabo Wabo and 1800 Reposado. While both versions were a lot more acidic than I would prefer a margarita to be, the Cabo Wabo-based version was clearly better. I also tried making sure I had plenty of salt in each sip; with the deep acidity of the lemons and the characteristic bitter and tart flavors of the tequila, more salt was basically better, bringing out more flavor, nearly up to the point where I was drinking brine. I will never ask for a salt-free margarita again, given the clear benefits of enough salt to last the whole drink. The tequila flavors really emerged with the help of salt, and their complementary relationship to the citrus was exquisitely heightened.
More sweetness was obviously called for, though. My first thought was to increase the amount of Triple Sec, which (as liqueurs are by definition) is very sugary, around 38% by volume according to this source. I tried a 2:3 Triple Sec:tequila mixture and found that I was hiding the better part of the flavors of the tequila and the fresh citrus; this was less objectionable when I was using the less-flavorful 1800 tequila, but still not really ideal. The correct path, then, seemed to be adding some sugar.
I tried adding about a a generous pinch — maybe a quarter-teaspoon? — of granulated sugar, and I also tried twice that amount. The latter was a bit treacly, making me want more salt. A pinch of sugar was plenty, giving a well-balanced and complex margarita with abundant citrus but a central place for a well-complemented tequila. Both the 1800 and the Cabo Wabo-based margaritas turned out fine.
And so I have come to the conclusion that when I am taking advantage of the fruit of my backyard, a margrita composed of around one part Triple Sec, 3 parts fresh lemon juice, 3 parts good tequila, and a generous pinch of sugar, shaken over ice and served in a glass with a thoroughly salted rim, is a fine way to appreciate abundance, an excellent way to celebrate each perfect day in paradise (as you’ll soon see when I roll out the Silicon Valley weather widget shortly). The offices of the Valley’s tech companies are constructed on some of the best agricultural land in the world, and each perfect margarita and each delcious slice of jammy toast I eat remind me that I need to justify that replacement. What a motivator!
Still figuring out what to do with those apples and pears, and thinking cider/perry. Recommendations are welcome in the comments.
*Claims have been made that “gangsta rap” “glorifies” drug dealing. I’d have disagreed with that claim until quite recently; Ghostface and Raekwon have since made a convincing case: that, given that a kilo is a thousand grams, “it’s nice to have a thousand fans;” and that unlike mainstream chemists, crack lab chemists are “brolic” (Ghostface feat. Raekwon, “Kilo.” In Ghostface Killah, ed., Fishscale. Def Jam: New York, 2006).
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