What’s in season in the Lake Geneva region

The Lake Geneva region offers an interesting mix of spring, summer and fall fruit and vegetables at this time of year. It is surprising what a variety of local fruit and vegetables are still available this late in the growing season.

We plan to publish MarketView every week or so so you can take a look at our list before you go to the market.  It should serve as a tool to help you make your grocery list and menus for the week before you go off to the market.

Since there is such a large variety at the moment, I’ve separated the list into categories.

Spring and summer fruit and vegetables

Aubergine/eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette/zucchini, green beans, radishes, bell peppers of all colors.

Strawberries, corn, raspberries, blackberries (rarer than the other berries).

Rosemary, basil, mint, dill, coriander, parsley, laurel, scallions.

Fall fruit and vegetables

Baby carrots, radishes of all types, new potatoes, Swiss chard (blettes).

Rhubarb, grapes, apples, pears.

Wild greens of all types, mesclun, cabbage, beets.

Plums, peaches, leeks, pumpkin, squash of all types, cauliflower.

Flowers

As Laila Rodriguez noted in her much needed post How to find outdoor food markets in Geneva of 8 September 2009, a list of Geneva’s outdoor food and farmers markets can be found on the city of Geneva’s Département Environnement Urbain & Sécurité site.

Farmers markets, Geneva

Summertime is diet time: an approach to changing your eating habits

Summertime is the best time to start changing your eating habits. Fruits and vegetables are tastier and cheaper in summer, so your tastebuds are satisfied, but with fewer calories and more fiber. You can take advantage of this time to start a lifestyle change that will not only help you lose weight, but hopefully change your way of eating for the rest of your life.

The Swiss seem to have understood some of the basic rules better than others, according to our 27 July 2009 article on the Swiss preference for fresh fruit and milk products.

Read more…

Height of season for Valais apricots, considered best in Switzerland

With last weekend being the height of the Valais apricot season, I thought it timely to offer you a few ideas for using them while they’re ripe and ready.

Choosing your apricots

Photo courtesy of Ellen Wallace.

The first and most important thing is to buy tree-ripened apricots. By definition, this means local ones, since ripe apricots are soft to the touch and do not travel well.

If you plan to eat them fresh, they should be soft, but not blemished or bruised. The riper they are, the more flavorful they are.

If you are using them for cooking, the riper the better, and you can even get by with blemishes as long as they are not rotten-looking. As a general rule, the softer the sweeter.

You will often see crates of extra-ripe apricots discounted in farmers markets. Look them over, and if there are not too many black or rotting ones, they are actually the best for cooking purposes, especially for jams, cakes and sauces.

Recipe ideas for apricots

Note: With all apricot recipes, the amount of sugar used depends on the acidity of the apricots. The acidity depends on the ripeness, origin and variety. With so many factors coming into play, taste tests are indispensable and the quantity of sugar should be determined by taste, using the quantities given here as a guideline.

Apricot jam

The basic formula is 900 grams/2 lbs of sugar for every 2 kilograms/4 1/2 lbs of fruit used. This holds true for apricots, apples, cherries, nectarines and plums. If you like your jam really sweet, you can put equal weights of fruit and sugar.

Use cane sugar for more taste. I often halve the quantity of sugar in dessert recipes, but with jams this can be tricky, since sugar is what makes the jam set. It also serves as a preservative. If your fruit is extra-sweet, you might try cutting the quantity of sugar a tad.

Photo courtesy of Ellen Wallace.

Wash and rub apricots until perfectly clean. Remove any rotten spots with a paring knife. Dry well. Cut in half and remove stones. Save about half of the stones for later use.

Place apricots in a copper confiturier or a large stock pot. Add sugar. Let it sit overnight.

If the apricots are not ripe enough, they will not render any natural juices. If there are no juices, add 500 ml/1 pint of water to the pan.

Slowly bring to a boil on low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. This can take anywhere from 1 hour to 2 1/2 hours, depending on the water content of the apricots and the type of pan and stove or cooker you are using. Scrape the sides of the pan from time to time so that the mixture doesn’t crystallize.

The jam is set when you can dip a wooden spoon in it and it completely coats the spoon. Let jam settle for about 15 minutes before putting it into jars.

Pour jam into sterilized glass jars. Leave to cool. If you see the jam hasn’t set properly, you can put it back into the pan and boil it again, adding a little lemon juice.

Add two stones to each jar. Cool. Seal jars.

Apricot purée or coulis

Once again, the amount of sugar you use depends on whether you want it to have a tart flavor or a sweet flavor. If you’re going to pour it onto a very sweet cake or pie, opt for a more acidic taste. If you’re eating with something that is itself a little acidic, you might want to make your sauce sweeter. And once again, the sweetness will always depend on the ripeness of your apricots, so you’ll have to do a taste test in any case.

Wash apricots. Remove stones.

Put 300 grams/10 ounces of cane sugar (labeled sucre de canne roux or cassonade in Swiss and French supermarkets) and a vanilla bean (cut open in the lengthwise direction) into a saucepan. Slowly bring to a boil over medium heat until it begins to thicken and sugar has completely dissolved, i.e. until it forms a syrup.

Put 500 grams/18 ounces of apricots into a food processor, or run them through a food mill or chinois.  Add apricots to the liquid sugar mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. Heat mixture until it is thick enough to completely coat a wooden spoon.

This apricot sauce can be eaten warm or cold, depending on what you are using it with. It keeps for several days in the refrigerator.

Apricot coulis is a perfect accompaniment to a dark chocolate cake, but can be used to make ice cream sundaes or parfaits just as easily.

It can also be used in savory dishes, for example with cold chicken breasts or cold pork roast. In this case, you would of course considerably reduce the amount of sugar.

Roasted apricots

Preheat oven to 250° C or French mark 8. Wash apricots. Cut in half. Remove stone.

Lay apricot halves out on a roasting tin or broiler pan, or in a large casserole dish. Sprinkle lightly with brown cane sugar and just a tad of butter, distributed evenly in small bits, so that it will form a natural sauce.  (This can also be done on a barbecue grill, but you’d lose the juices.) Put in oven, and immediately turn temperature down to 220° C or French mark 7. Turn when top side is browned. If butter starts to burn, add a few drops of water.

When soft and slightly browned and caramelized, remove from oven or grill.

Distribute on individual plates. Serve with a scoop of salt caramel, coffee or walnut ice cream. Lightly sprinkle with vanilla powder (labeled poudre vanille or vanille en poudre in supermarket; easy to find in France, but difficult to find in Switzerland), cinnamon and a high-quality chocolate or cocoa powder. Drizzle a little maple syrup over it. It is now ready to serve.

Sugar-free apricot purée or coulis

The great French chef Michel Guérard, who started the Cuisine Minceur movement in 1974, has a recipe for a sugar-free version of a coulis. This is adapted from the 1976 edition of Michel Guérard’s Cuisine Minceur, now out of print:

Wash, halve and pit 12 ripe fresh apricots. In a saucepan, add apricots, 1/2 cup of water, 1 vanilla bean (cut open in the lengthwise direction, down the middle) and artificial sweetener to taste, the equivalent of about 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, until mixture is reduced by about one third.

Remove vanilla bean. Put mixture in a food processor to make a purée.

This sugar-free sauce can be served in the same manner as the traditional apricot purée or coulis recipe above.

Valais, Switzerland has some of the world's best apricots, now in peak season

Apricots are on sale in Valais and this weekend is their peak, say pickers and sellers. I’ve been buying them at different places, mainly for eating but I’m trying to convince the household’s jam-maker that our supply is running low. He’s more interested in making raspberry jam but the two together on a table with slices of hot toast on a fine summer morning comes close to a visit to a cathedral!

Varieties

The main traditional variety is called Luizet. They are smaller and less tart than some of the smoother skinned new varieties such as Goldrich. They also don’t keep as well, which is why you see fewer of the Luizet in supermarkets. I find the Luizet more flavourful but my visiting English mother-in-law prefers the newer ones for snacks. Valais grows 10 varieties, with the advantage to growers that the season is a bit longer.

The traditional ones are best for jam-making. We’ve been paying a little over CHF5 for a kilo and CHF20 or a bit more for boxes of 6 kilos.

Where to buy them

This is a wonderful time to visit some of the apricot-orchard towns around Sion and Sierre, along the Rhone river, where the trees are still laden with fruit and the mountains with snowy peaks rise above you.

Apricots growing in Grone, sunny Swiss Alps across the Rhone in the background

No shortage - yet

My favourite is Grone, at the heart of this area, on a road going up to Nendaz, which is a spectacular and cool spot in summer, another 20 minute drive up the mountainside. But there is no shortage of signs for apricots for sale! And they are all good. Do buy direct from the grower, with the trees a few metres away, if you can.

One tip, if you’re making jam: crack the pit and use the soft centre, which looks and tastes a bit like almond, for additional flavour.

The perfect fruit pie recipe that can be adapted for use with a wide variety of fruits. Photo courtesy of Rick Jaworski.

Stephanie Jaworski’s methods for making fruit tarts are perfect for the fruits that are now in season in the Lake Geneva region. What’s interesting is that she presents a method that is versatile and can be applied to various fruits. It is a sort of mix and match approach, which leaves you room for creativity.

In addition, the seasonal fruits she uses often coincide with those of the Lake Geneva region, for example the berries in the Geneva region and the apricots from hotter regions such as the Valais. Stephanie’s recipes are a mix of British, Canadian and American influences, which also makes them interesting.

Sandrine and Olivier Chapuis
1037 route des Mermes
74140 Veigy-Foncenex
Tel. +33 (0)4 50 94 84 09

First local tomatoes. Photo courtesy of Suat Eman.

Sandrine and Olivier Chapuis in Veigy-Foncenex in France are the great specialists of juicy, full-flavored tomatoes in the Geneva area. They grow between 20 and 30 different varieties every year. There are yellow, orange, green, tiger stripe, red: a cornucopia of color and as sweet as fruit (of course they are fruit, technically speaking).

The first yellow cherry tomatoes were already in the Boulevard Hélvétique market in Geneva last Saturday. They expect the others to slowly start ripening by around 10 July 2009.

Some other summer vegetables have already started to ripen, including aubergines (eggplants) and sweet peppers. The zucchini (courgettes) should be ready in a week or so.

The Chapuis’ also have the widest range of wide and other greens and mescluns I’ve seen in Geneva.

You can also buy directly from them in Veigy-Foncenex, but Sandrine prefers that you call beforehand because she is not always there. After all farmers have to work in the fields sometimes!

They produce all the produce they sell in the farmers market, so you can be sure that is both fresh and local. Sandrine, or “Sabi,” as she is nicknamed, has lots of great recipes in her head for every product she sells.

Since their fields are scattered out in various places, she prefers customers to tell her what they want, and she will have it ready for them when they come to pick it up. The best time is Tuesday or Friday between 4 and 8, or any other evening on appointment. The Chapuis are trying to set up a system for opening every evening, but are awaiting authorization from city authorities regarding parking, since they are right off the route nationale.

First cherry tomatoes already in the farmers market. Photo courtesy of Scott Howden.

How to keep up with what’s in season in the Lake Geneva region

Our MarketDay posts provide a photo gallery of all the products locally available every week in the local farmers markets.

The Lake Geneva region still isn’t providing hot-weather products like melons and tomatoes, so the photo galleries already posted provide a good overview of what you can expect to find at the farmers market. It can serve as a guide when making your shopping list, so that you don’t have any unpleasant surprises when you get there.

Another source of information is OPAGE, the Geneva office for the promotion of local agricultural products. Unfortunately, their photo gallery is short and is not regularly updated. The seasonal food chart could, however, serve as a complement to our weekly MarketDay posts.

Genève Famille offers information and good advice about buying local products, and says that in a 2008 enquiry carried out by “Bon à Savoir,” out of the 17 Swiss products examined, six proved to be less expensive in the Lausanne farmers market than in four large supermarkets selected for the survey. This is a bit on an aside, but it does indicate that it is not always more expensive to buy locally, and you can be sure that it will be fresher than anything you find in a supermarket.

“Proche de vous. Les Paysans suisses.” offers numerous brochures on various seasonal and local products, free of charge. Unfortunately, even though the site is in English, the brochures are only in German or French.

If you can’t get to the farmers market, you can also buy fresh, local products through the Cercle des Agriculteurs de Genève et Environs at 15 Rue des Sablières, 1242 Satigny, tel. +41(0)22 306 10 10.

In neighboring France, Produits du Terroir provides lists of address for a wide range of local products in the Rhône-Alpes region. France des Saveurs is also in the process of setting up a detailed listing for the region.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to come up with similar sources of information in Vaud.

Summertime is the perfect time to start!

Farmers market

Going to the farmers market can be made into an exciting, weekly event. Summer offers lots of fresh fruit that they can choose to make their smoothies, to put on their breakfast cereal, or to make fruit salads. Vegetables are tastier in summer than in winter, and there is a larger selection, so it is also an occasion to encourage them to try more vegetables. If they choose fruit and vegetables themselves, they will feel more part of the process, and are more likely to eat them.

Making the shopping list

Start by discussing the fruits and vegetables that are in season with your child before you go to the market. For the Lake Geneva region, you can look at our MarketDay photo albums, published regularly, to get an idea of what you can expect to find. If you are planning on making a meal together, choose the dishes and ingredients together when making your shopping list. If it’s fruit for snacks or smoothies, let them decide which ones they prefer.

It is a good idea to put up a food pyramid and a seasonal products chart somewhere in the kitchen, so you can refer to it when planning meals with the children, and also to explain why they must eat food such as green vegetables or fruit, for example. More suggestions are available in our 9 May 2009 post A fun, interactive guide for teaching your children good eating habits.

Explain the importance of buying local when possible. It is not only cheaper, but fresher, and therefore has more vitamins.

At the market

Once you’re at the market, let them start looking for the items on the list. When they’ve spotted them, explain how to choose, by color, smell, touch, ripeness, etc., but make sure to ask the vendor if it’s all right to touch first.

This is also a time to let them look for products that have a local origin written on the tags, and to explain that if the products are local, they are also more ecological, because the cost of transport is less, and that in turn makes them more economical. It takes a lot of fuel to bring tomatoes from Holland in July and August when we have them right here in the region. Reduced transport also cuts pollution.

Buying from local producers allows children to have direct contact with the farmers, and to ask questions if they like. Farmers love to talk about what they have lovingly produced, and this in turn encourages children to appreciate farmers’ hard work and the satisfaction that it brings them. There is a reciprocity: the farmer gives you something he or she has produced with care, and you in turn get to satisfy your tastebuds.

Make kids part of the entire process by letting them help prepare the meal or dish afterwards. Once again, they are more likely to eat it if they help prepare it.

Step 1: Getting your children interested in food

For younger children, one of the easiest ways of introducing them to the kitchen is to tempt them with a sweet, fruit smoothie.

Smoothies are easy and can be made all year, changing the flavor according to what fruits are in season.

So as to avoid adding sugar, it’s best to choose a fruit that is very ripe and sweet, and, of course, one that your child likes. Letting your child choose the fruit is also a way of teaching him or her how to shop for fresh fruit, and explain why you don’t buy strawberries from Chile at Christmas. Local fruit is not only fresher and therefore has more vitamins, but it is also nicer on the purse.

Bananas are good all year, and can be mixed with different fruits in the summer. There are endless combinations that change with the seasons.

At the moment, strawberries, melons, peaches, and raspberries are already available in the Geneva region or from nearby France or Italy. Indian mangoes make a divine smoothie, similar to an Indian lassi, and always a favorite for children. The buttery, honey-flavored yellow kiwis from New Zealand have a very short season, but are not as acidic as the green ones, and have just come on the market.

You can always follow my MarketDay blog post on Thursdays to get an idea of what’s available in the region before you do your shopping.

Recipe

Buttery, honey-flavored kiwis from New Zealand with Indian mangoes in the background

Buy your favorite plain yogurt. Pour the quantity required into the blender or food processor. Cut fruit into chunks. Add to blender. Churn it all up, then taste. If it’s too thick, just add fresh milk (UHT milk gives a strange, not-so-fresh flavor).

For younger children, it is easy to cut bananas up into chunks. Raspberries don’t need to be cut. This is a good time to teach them the easy way to eat a kiwi. Cut it in half for them, then let them scoop out the pulp with a spoon.

They may need a little help with mangoes, melons and peaches, but that too is a way of demonstrating how to prepare them so they can do it on their own when they get a little older.

Let your child taste to see whether they want more strawberries, more banana, or whatever. This is a way of teaching children to be discriminating in their tastes.

Nutritional value

Smoothies are about a healthy a snack as you can get. They are the perfect way to introduce your children to the kitchen, without overwhelming them.

Smoothies are full of protein, calcium, vitamin C, and fiber, as well as other healthy things, depending on what fruits you use. Take advantage of this moment to teach your kids about the connection between fresh good-tasting food and nutrition.