Melissa's
Great Book of Produce
Everything
You Need to Know About Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
by Cathy Thomas
Reviewed
by Rachel Levin
Melissa’s
Great Book of Produce is
to home cooks what the National Audubon Field
Guide is to bird
watchers. Cathy Thomas’ book, written
in concert with specialty purveyor Melissa’s
World Variety Produce, catalogues fruits and vegetables
of the world with notes on their natural habitat,
color variations and season. Some—like
bananas, potatoes, cantaloupe, and onions—are
as recognizable as common street pigeons. Others—like
magenta dragon fruit dotted with lime-green spines
or crimson rambutan with their hair-like protrusions—are
as exotic and multicolored as rainbow lorikeets. As
grocery stores and farmers markets bulge with new
varietals, heirlooms and unusual produce from abroad, Melissa’s
Great Book of Produce is a welcome guide.
Beyond
merely cataloguing produce, the book provides a context
for purchasing and preparing these fruits and veggies. Thomas vividly describes the textures
and flavors to expect in each variety and offers simple
serving suggestions, from soups and cocktails to pastas
and salads, as well as some full-fledged recipes. Take
the cherimoya, for example, which Thomas describes
as a kind of lizard-green pine cone. She likens
the creamy white flesh to custard with a blend of pineapple,
papaya, vanilla and banana flavors—a perfect
match for a tropical salad dressing or crème
brûlée, for which she presents a recipe. You’ll
find eye-catching fruits such as Buddha’s hand
citron, lychees and tamarillos and vegetables like
candy cane beets, fiddlehead ferns and salicornia. Yet,
oddly, you won’t find entries for the more familiar
apple, asparagus and arugula. No matter. Whip
up a guava daiquiri, mango roast pork loin, spicy three-cabbage
slaw and a passion fruit pavlova, and you’ll
feel as satisfied as if you’d sighted the rarest
of birds.
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