Pick A Pomegranate
Here's a young, budding pomegranate in my garden on a dewy morning. An unseen spider has been playing "connect-the-dots" with the fruit.
About a month later, it's ready to tear apart and eat. The seeds are delicious in salads and they're a good match with fuyu persimmons.
"The birthplace of the pomegranate was here in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Central Asia. And here is one of the last places on earth where wild pomegranates grow.” Barbara Baer heard Russian botanist, Dr. Gregory Levin, speak those words on a BBC broadcast in 2001. Barbara eventually tracked down Levin in Turkmenistan and got him to write a book she published called "Pomengranate Roads."
While we mostly find the "Wonderful" variety of pomegranate in stores and in nurseries but Levin had identified 1,117 different varieties -- with yellow, purple, even black seeds -- from twenty-seven countries on four continents. His story is one of dedication and persistence in the face of hardship -- to spend one's professional life collecting and studying with great seriousness this happy fruit.
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I like this fruit series. Good on you!
I have two potted pomegranates, three years old. No flowers yet, but they are nice indoor bushes.
I learned a simple, amazing salad recipe from some turkish friends of mine - even quantities of pomegranate fruit, chopped walnuts, and pimento olives, including the water. These simple ingredients have an alchemical reaction which is outstanding. You must taste it to believe how good it is.
You can easily and quickly clean a pomegranate by filling a salad bowl with water and breaking up the fruit. I'm pretty sure the seeds float to the top, and the other bits go the bottom. No juice stains, and lots of seeds ready to eat quickly!
Pomegranites are sacred to the goddess Persephone, and featured prominently in pagan celebrations concerning that goddess.
Ivan - it's the other way around (I've been doing it a lot this fall) - arils sink, pulp floats, but that _is_ a good way. To make it even easier, cut off the blossom end, score the sides lightly and let sit in the water for 15 to 20 minutes. The fruit breaks apart even more easily.
I read Pomegranate Roads a while ago - enjoyed it thoroughly. My 2 fave fruits are from Central Asia - apples and pomegranates.
How 'bout a jujube post?
this fruit is called "grenade" in french, and there's a really common "sweet fruit drink to dilute" that's called "grenadine" (when it's usually made of strawberries and other red fruits)
this drink almost makes me sick, it's the typical thing to serve for young girls (boys would get lemon and orange... guess why...)
still got to say I love to it eat raw, just cut the skin and eat the seeds, yummy!
might be nice with a salad though.
I was discussing pomes today with some co-workers, how we love them, how we eat them and we all agreed on this old mexican restaurant in the Valley. The granny who has run the joint forever has the most bomb guacamole...her secret? Pomegranate seeds.
Last year about this time my wife and I were in Israel. Part of our trip took us to the very old 'Prison City' of Akka. As we were walking through the Sea Gate toward the beach we saw a fresh pomegranite juice vendor. Very simple - a cart piled high with the fruit, and a hand press to squeeze out the juice. Everyone in our group bought a glass full, including me. I expected it to be very tart, too much so for me to drink. Instead, it was almost sweet, and very refreshing. Maybe it was the type of fruit, maybe it was the freshness. In any case it was a wonderful treat.
Oh man, Dougall, it was just a few months ago I was buying pomegranate juice from a vendor in Israel. His cat scratched me pretty good (I should have known better than to try and pet her).
I recently had a dinner with my boyfriend's parents where his mom used pomegranate seeds as a salad ingredient. I had never heard of doing such a thing, but it was absolutely scrumptious.
I would like to try pomegranates as a snack food to keep my hands busy (this role is currently occupied by sunflower seeds), but they're so stainy!
It's called as 'Delima' in my hometown.
In my childhood I didn't know how to eat the fruit so I just chewing the seeds lol.
"Melograno" in Italy
very common fruit, in the north Italy is common found melograno and persimmon tree in private garden.
i like it with sugar and white vine or lemon just.
Granada in Andalucia is named after the pomegranate. There are stylised pomegranates all over the city, most prominently on bollards.
Rossetti painted a gorgeous picture of Persephone/Proserpine eating a pomegranate; though from the way she's done it, I suspect he had never eaten one himself.
A friend of mine suggested that the best way to extract the seeds is to slice the fruit in half horizontally, and hit it with a wooden spoon. He claims that the seeds 'just drop out'. This has never worked for me.
PARTY SEASON TIP ALERT:
spoon pomegranate seeds into your bubbly (champagne, prosecco, cava, it matters not)... delicious AND decadent!
(better with your actual dry brut/spumante than your gross-out-sweet demi-sec/frizzante bullcrap, btw)
As well as being tasty fun, pomegranates can change the world!
Here's a great project in Afghanistan, POM354, that's encouraging farmers to switch from opium production to pomegranate:
http://www.pom354.com
Take a look, it's run as a charity and you can sponsor a tree for £8/$12.
Pomegranates are amazing, simply delicious, defenitely my favorite fruit. There's a Jewish Sephardic pomegranate chicken recipe in my family which is simply amazing. I'll have to try to find it among the shelves of cookbooks in my house...
What does it for me is the feeling that I'm eating garnets - like the living jewels that are described in "The Silver Chair".
http://www.sai.msu.su/wm/paint/auth/durer/adam-eve/adam-eve.jpg
There's a delicious pomegranate molasses that is just concentrated juice. It's not thick like our molasses; more a cordial. It make a fantastic salad dressing mixed with garlic, lemon juice, salt and olive oil. They sell it in Middle Eastern shops. A nice way for pomegranate aficionados to enjoy it year round.
Sorry Takuan, but that's a fig tree- look at the leaves.
plantz wuz differunt bak den
Pomegranates are good subject matter: http://ryanstudio.blogspot.com/2008/11/pomegranate-no-2.html
"Pomegranate Mythology
Pomegranate
The ancient Persians believed that Eve was tempted with a pomegranate in the Garden of Eden, and in Persian mythology Isfandiyar eats a pomegranate and becomes invincible. In Hebrew tradition, the pomegranate was said to have 613 seeds representing the 613 commandments of the Torah, and the fruit was used to decorate the Torah and its coverings. The ancient Greeks knew pomegranate as the fruit of the dead and in Greek mythology, Hades offered a seed of the fruit to Persephone who took it because she thought it looked like a jewel and thus condemned herself to spend some time with Hades in the underworld every year. The Prophet Mohammed is said to have encouraged his followers to eat the fruit to purge envy and hatred. In China the fruit symbolized longevity, and in the mythology of ancient Babylonia, pomegranate was believed to be an agent of resurrection."