AS Juliet said in Will Shakespeare’s exquisite first balcony scene, it was with ’such sweet sorrow’ that we knew that Sweetness the Patisserie in Epping closed for a much-deserved break on Christmas Eve, but with joy that we learned that Gena Karpf and her talented staff began cooking again on 9 January. This means that Granny Smith again will have Sweetness’ marvellous, hand-made sweet mallows back in-store next week. These delicious, beautifully-presented bags and ‘rubik’s cube’ of egg-white confections with natural fruit flavours were a runaway success with us in the lead-up to Christmas. But one lonely bag was left on our shelves on New Year’s eve, so it came with us on our river journey out west.

Sweetness has also been glowingly endorsed in the new year edition of The Foodies’ Guide to Sydney. We are in love…with the mallows, the dark and white rocky road, florentines, chocolate toffee and spiced pecans.

WE’VE been asked recently for a few foods that are out of season. The first was a request for apples. Organic apples aren’t as industrially treated  – waxed and cold-stored – as conventional apples tend to be, so are much more seasonal. Lucky us for when they’re in season…but not yet: those little green apples are busy growing, ready for plucking come late summer. I’ve only recently pruned dwarf gravensteins and cox’s orange pippins that are espaliered in my South Turramurra backyard, removing a few young apples from each of the heavier clusters to leave perhaps just a pair to develop through the summer.

Then we had a request for custard apples, which also are out of season. Ditto brussels sprouts and horseradish. These questions make me realise that one thing that has deteriorated with the rise of industrial farming, globalisation and the use of preserving chemicals and cold storage in the food business is our awareness of the seasons and knowledge of the fruits and vegetables that are native to, say, summer, or winter. It’s important for our local farmers, particularly, that we eaters should try to become ‘literate’ about food seasonality. If it’s in season then it’s fresh, and better for us. It’s also more likely to be produced locally, which means you’re directly supporting local farmers when you buy food that’s truly ‘new season’. Our website’s seasonal guide can help to distinguish between what’s real and what might be said to be ‘in season’ but which has just emerged after 10 months in cold storage.

- Peter Kenyon

You may remember that we had a delightful surprise at the end of Granny Smith Natural Food Market’s first summer of trading when we received a generous haul of heirloom apples from Orange. In 2003 our store was reviewed in The Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Living’ guide. The review was seen by Borry and Gaye Gartrell, heirloom fruit orchardists and winemakers, who farm some magnificent country on the slopes of Mount Canobolas near Orange in central western NSW. My experience of community-supported agriculture, mentioned in the article, encouraged them to bring me some of their fabulous apple varieties. Everyone raved about the beautiful, developed flavours of the fruit. Like most fruits and vegetables, true heirloom varieties rarely make it to market. With more than 170 varieties of apples growing at an altitude of 1000 metres, Borry knows them all. Some are perfect for apple sauce, some for drying, some for eating fresh, some for cider. Some are super-early, ripening in January, and some – like Granny Smiths – can still be on the trees when the first snow falls on Mount Canobolas in May.

I’ve been intending to go up there each year to get some more of this amazing fruit but, being busy, it never happened. That is, until late March 2011, when I drove to Orange. Though the apple season was mostly behind us, the next-to-last of late season fruit was still on the trees, having grown slowly through the warmer months to become fully-flavoured. I helped Borry pick three late season varieties: Democrats, Roman Beauties and King Davids.

A few weeks later I returned for the last of the Cox’s Orange Pippins – the world’s finest dessert apple, Lord Lambourne, Lady of the Snows, the superb Carrington, and Buncombe. By this time – late in March – some of the Borrodell apples had developed a honey core: golden and juicy through the centre, like honey comb, the hallmark of intense flavour development in fruit still on the tree.

Lord Lambourne is described on authoritative website orangepippin.com as one of the earliest of the season’s English-style dessert apples. Carrington ‘Early’ is described by a Tasmanian orchardist as a ‘Christmas apple’, small, red and with bland white flesh. This is not how I would rate the Carrington picked from Borry’s orchard this autumn past. Beautifully crisp much after Christmas, it was superb. Buncombe – also known in North America as Red Winter Permain or Red Fall Pippin – is thought to have been raised in North Carolina in the 1800s. It is described as a high quality dessert apple.

We’ve been very pleased at Granny Smith’s to enjoy a wonderful response from customers to our stocking – albeit for a short season – these heritage apples from Orange. One customer ordered a case of Bramley’s Seedling. She was overjoyed to find that someone not too far from Sydney was growing this quintessential English cooking apple. The intense acidity of Bramley’s guarantees, when cooked, ‘the lightest and fluffiest of purees’, according to orangepippin.com. England remains the only place in the world where a distinction is made between ‘eaters’ and ‘cookers’ among varieties of apple. Bramley’s is undoubtedly the perfect ‘cooker’.

Links
Borry and Gaye Gartrell’s Borrodell on the Mount heritage apple orchard
Heirloom apple authoritative website orangepippin.com

Sydney's Seasonal Food, a Slow Food guide.

We’ve been very happy to see our farmers’ Sydney Sustainable Markets at Taylor Square support Slow Food’s Sydney’s Seasonal Food guide, released late in 2010. ‘For the first time ever,’ says the markets’ website, ‘a resource is available to assist in answering the question: ‘What’s in season now in Sydney?’ We’d recommend the guide to anyone who’s ever asked that question.’

Slow Food Sydney’s John Newton and I compiled the guide to help Sydneysiders to re-establish connection with our food supply. It is also another means of supporting Sydney region farmers and fishermen.

If we bow to the dictates of Australia’s two major food grocery chains – which care only about price – we’ll end up bypassing smaller, local growers in favour of larger, more industrial producers and imports. Larger growers often can produce food more cheaply, but smaller growers can produce a more diverse range of crops and get them to market faster.

Local growers also look after the land around our cities and provide the attractive rural landscapes we so enjoy. Losing this connection to our food supply is dangerous to our health and our culture. Strong societies have always been built on agriculture. We cannot afford to lose ours to the tenuous promise of a more efficient ‘somewhere else’.

The guide includes lists of local, seasonally-produced food month by month and detailed comments about the availability of particular varieties.

The zone which we consider local is the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain farming region to the south-west and north-west of the city. When we can’t (find produce that’s local), then we specify New South Wales or, in some extreme cases, such as rare turkeys bred seasonally, we point the reader to a useful source, wherever it may be.

The guide also contains information about Sydney seafood and the breeding and raising of animals for meat, comprising beef, lamb, goat, pork and poultry, including game.

The guide is available for purchase at selected Sydney farmers’ markets, such as Everleigh and Taylor Square, and from retailers, including our own Granny Smith Natural Food Market. John and I also hope that chefs and independent grocers and butchers concerned about food diversity and seasonality will also stock the guide.

Buying the Guide
Sydney’s Seasonal Food – a 40-page soft cover publication – is available over the counter from Granny Smith Natural Food Market for $10.00. All proceeds aid Slow Food Sydney. You can call in and buy one from us at 6 Princes Street, Turramurra, or email or telephone Slow Food Sydney’s Syd Pemberton on 0415 737 631 and she can mail you one (with a small additional charge to cover postage). Interested re-sellers should also contact Syd to discuss wholesale purchases.