Beau bought a container of kumquats last week during his fortnightly trip to Costco.
Do you even know what kumquats are? If you do, just skip the next paragraph and either roll your eyes at the arrogance that compels me to explain, or feel a little bit smug that you know what kumquats are, along with other unusual fruits like Buddha’s hand, a citrus fruit that can nevertheless be included in apple pie, to advantage, I’ve heard.
Kumquats are like mini oranges, an inch long at most and maybe a little elongated. The wonderful and unique thing about them—unique in the citrus family, as far as I know—is that you eat the whole fruit. Zesty peel and all. Bitter pith and all. And that sweet, orange-like juicy tiny fruit in the middle. A complex and wonderful combination of every citrus experience. The thin skin pops, the sweet fruit juice is released, and the little bit of pith transmits that little bit of bitterness that makes you feel very grown up for enjoying kumquats.
Sometimes kumquats have seeds, which you can spit out. But you don’t have to, especially if you’ve already accidentally mashed them a bit with your molars.
Beau’s noticing and buying these kumquats was clearly an act of love. They weren’t on the list. He doesn’t really like them, and I sure do like them. Costco, for all I admire about its products, prices and treatment of employees, is an assault on the senses. It would be fully forgivable to get most of what’s on the list and not notice something not on the list that only your wife likes.
There’s one other fruit in that category: Fuyu persimmons. I love them, and Beau is indifferent to them. He bought me a flat of Fuyus too. But this story is not about persimmons, or even about Beau.
These particular kumquats, for all the delight they represented, simply weren’t good. Maybe too early in the season? I cut one open for diagnosis, and the fruit inside was desiccated. The overall kumquat was squishier than it rightfully should have been. And the ones that weren’t at the top of the container did not sport that healthy, bright orange color. Instead they showed up wearing a washed-out yellow-green.
But I am a child of parents who went through the Great Depression. My mom was the child of two school teachers, and my dad’s family owned a lucrative construction business in New Jersey that may or may not have had ties to the mob. We have an English surname, so I’m going to say not. But as far as economic hardship goes, I don’t think they really suffered all that much during the Great Depression. Unlike my father-in-law, who once sold his jacket for food. In the winter. In Germany, not in the SF Bay Area where winter means we might hit freezing once or twice on a cold night. But that’s a different story.
Even though relatively insulated from the Great Depression, my parents and subsequently I absorbed the lesson that one must not waste food. Even kumquats devoid of flavor, lacking proper color and firmness. This is a deeply rooted lesson.
So I zested them. I don’t think I want to devote another paragraph to what zesting is because, seriously, one can look these things up.
What’s odd about zesting a kumquat is that my zester is about a foot long, seemingly designed for zesting a pumpkin, if anyone had the inclination to zest a pumpkin. (That’s not really a thing.) Nevertheless the giant zester works excellently for lemons, limes and oranges. But kumquats are so small that the act of zesting them is ridiculous. The cost/benefit ratio is absolutely upside-down. You could think: Doesn’t the surface area-to-volume ratio of such a small citrus justify its zesting? The answer is no. I might add “you nerd,” but the added phrase would be delivered with love.
I zested them anyway, for my parents who no doubt saw other families suffer during the Great Depression. Or at least heard about it on the news, on the radio.
At the end of it, a good 52 minutes later, I reluctantly composted 43 naked kumquats (after briefly thinking, what could I do with these naked kumquat carcasses?) and then looked at the one tablespoon of zest I’d managed to generate.
I added that hard-won tablespoon of kumquat zest to the bucket of cranberries simmering on the stove, getting ready to pop and make nice, tart cranberry sauce.
The cranberry sauce was delicious. Not a hint of kumquat flavor was detectable. The kumquat zest was homeopathic homage to the suffering that my parents indirectly experienced during the Great Depression, 90 years ago.
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