NYT -- Pomegranates for One and All.
October 30, 2002
Pomegranates for One and All
By DAVID KARP
LOST HILLS, Calif. - IN this age of fast fruit, the
pomegranate seems a paradoxical candidate for mass appeal.
Of ancient origin, celebrated in myth and art, it is
regally beautiful in its leathery scarlet skin and turreted
crown. Inside, it is like a treasure chest, with papery
white membranes encasing hundreds of glistening garnet gems
- seeds embedded in juice sacs. The flavor is sweet-tart
and winy, intense but refreshing. Pomegranates are
laborious and messy to eat, however, which is probably why
only 5 percent of Americans have ever tasted one.
Despite this limited market, Stewart and Lynda Resnick,
Beverly Hills billionaires, have planted 6,000 acres of
pomegranates here in the San Joaquin Valley, a step that
will almost quadruple United States production of
pomegranates in five years. The couple's Paramount Farming
Company and Paramount Citrus Association, which grow navel
oranges, pistachios and almonds in addition to
pomegranates, together rank as the nation's largest fruit
and nut growing operation, with 125 square miles of farms.
The Resnicks also own Teleflora, a national flower delivery
network, and the Franklin Mint.
Pomegranates, which contain high levels of antioxidants,
have been reputed for millennia to have therapeutic
properties, and recent medical studies convinced the
Resnicks that the fruit could be the next big thing. From
1996 to 2001 they radically expanded their pomegranate
orchards, which now stretch for 15 miles along a lonely
strip west of Interstate 5 between Kettleman City and Lost
Hills, in Kings and Kern Counties. The California Aqueduct,
which flows through the property, provides water.
Pomegranates grow naturally as bushy shrubs, but the
Paramount plantings have been pruned into freestanding
trees with single trunks, grown from cuttings in the farm's
nursery. During the harvest, in October, workers search
through the thorny branches for the reddest, ripest fruit,
which they clip into canvas bags and then carefully release
into large plastic bins.
Almost all of the nation's commercial pomegranate crop
comes from the San Joaquin Valley, where hot dry summers
mature sweet, attractive fruit. Several of the largest
plantings, including Paramount's, are on the valley's west
side, where cool night air draining from the hills helps
the fruit color faster.
By far the leading variety in California, and the only kind
planted by Paramount, is the modestly named Wonderful,
which a Porterville, Calif., farmer propagated in 1896 from
a Florida cutting. It yields large quantities of big glossy
purple-red fruit, with juicy deep crimson pulp, high in
sweetness, acidity and flavor.
The Wonderful is also relatively resistant to fruit
cracking, the bane of the industry. Especially after it
rains, ripe pomegranates tend to split open, sometimes
turning almost inside out. Such fruit tastes fine but
decays quickly and can be sold only for juice, except at
farmers' markets.
Pomegranate trees start bearing after three or four years,
but take eight years to reach full production. Joseph
MacIlvaine, the president of the Paramount Farming Company,
estimates that when all the farm's million-plus trees are
mature, in 2007, they will yield 15 tons an acre, or 180
million pounds a year - almost one fruit for every
American.
Other growers fear that such an avalanche will glut the
market for pomegranates, which so far have been mostly an
ethnic and specialty item. "The Resnicks have the power to
bankrupt virtually every pomegranate grower in the state,"
said Dee Slayman, who farms 470 acres of the fruit in Kern
County.
Lynda Resnick, who has made the pomegranate project her
personal crusade, maintains that the fruit's health
benefits and the coming promotional campaign by Paramount's
pomegranate marketing affiliate, Pom Wonderful, will
silence the doubters.
"Yes, I'm up at night worrying - that we won't have enough
pomegranates!" she said in her company's West Los Angeles
office, where art depicting the ruddy fruit adorns the
lobby.
As part of Mrs. Resnick's marketing and sales plan, a
specially designed press at the farm crushes whole fruit,
including cosmetically challenged specimens, into a red
river that flows out a spout at the bottom. Three weeks
ago, Pom Wonderful introduced a new line of juice in
distinctive glass bottles, shaped like stacked
pomegranates, at markets in southern California. National
distribution is planned for next year.
Samples tasted recently were superbly rich flavored and
winy, with a pleasing tannic tinge and a lingering
aftertaste, but without cloying oversweetness. Other brands
of pomegranate juice, available mostly at Middle Eastern
and health food stores, vary greatly in quality. Beware of
poorly stored juice, which turns musty, and if there is
sediment, don't stir it up.
Fresh pomegranates are on sale from August through
December, but peak availability is in October and November.
Generally they're ripe and ready to eat; prematurely
harvested fruit never sweetens. The best specimens are
large, heavy and dark for their variety, with
fresh-looking, unbroken rinds. Pomegranates keep several
months in the refrigerator, but eventually dry out and lose
their sprightly flavor.
There's an art to filleting a pomegranate, an operation
best performed with the fruit submerged in a bowl of water,
to avoid squirts from its staining juice. Cut off a bit of
the crown end, lightly score several vertical lines, and
break the sections apart. Scoop out the seeds (properly
called arils, a botanical term that includes the tiny
actual seeds and the juicy, edible pulp around them).
Discard pieces of rind, pith and membrane. The arils can be
eaten by hand, or served in a bowl with a spoon. In the
Mideast they are often sprinkled with sugar, lime juice or
rose water. Most aficionados swallow the nutty-flavored
actual seeds, which are usually small and edible, but those
who find them objectionable spit them out.
Scientists in Israel and at the University of California at
Davis have devised a method for mechanically extracting
pomegranate arils from halved fruit with jets of air.
Similar convenience foods like prewashed greens and "fresh
cut" apples are increasingly popular, but so far no one is
selling ready-to-eat pomegranates.
The arils can be sprinkled over salads, rice dishes and
desserts. The juice is used for making jelly, sorbet, cool
drinks similar to lemonade, and a kind of wine.
In the Mideast the juice of sour pomegranates is reduced to
a thick, dark syrup and used in dishes like fesenjan, a
traditional Persian stew made with walnuts and duck or
chicken. Turks and Syrians also mix the syrup with walnuts
and tomato paste in muhammara, eaten with bread as an
accompaniment to main dishes. In Indian cookery, sun-dried
sour pomegranate arils, called anardana, are ground and
used to impart tartness to chutneys and curries.
Pomegranates originated in the region from Central Asia to
Turkey, most likely in Persia, where they have been
cultivated for 5,000 years. Along with grapes, figs and
olives, they were one of the most important fruits of
antiquity, and are mentioned prominently in the Bible: the
Israelites in the Sinai desert longed for the refreshing
pomegranates they remembered from Egypt, and the robes of
Jewish kings were embroidered with images of the fruit.
Today they are customarily consumed at the Rosh Hashana,
Sukkot and Tu B'Shevat holidays.
The Spanish brought pomegranates to the New World, and in
the late 18th century Franciscan friars planted them at
California missions. Although the fruit was common in early
California gardens, commercial cultivation began just a
century ago, soon after the introduction of the Wonderful.
One family, the Slaymans, dominated the pomegranate
business for 50 years, starting in the 1920's, as Victor
Slayman, 82, reminisced with this reporter at his home in
Porterville.
The Slaymans, he said, furnished pomegranate trees to
citrus growers to plant in the low-lying parts of their
groves that were too cold for oranges. "We'd give them the
trees free if they'd plant five or 10 vacant acres and give
us a picking contract," he recalled. Most of the fruit was
shipped to Eastern cities. "Jews, Italians and Middle
Eastern people were the major buyers," Mr. Slayman said.
The family nurtured the industry by developing packing and
quality standards, he said, and by 1975, when it sold its
packing house in nearby Lindsay, California had 2,500
planted acres of pomegranates.
The family's famous Lulu brand is just a memory, but Dee
Slayman, Victor Slayman's nephew, has carved out his own
niche as the king of early-season pomegranates. On his farm
west of Wheeler Ridge, at the southern edge of the San
Joaquin Valley, he grows early varieties in a hot,
early-maturing climate, and ships his first fruit in the
last days of July.
"The first month people are into other fruit, so there's a
very limited demand for pomegranates," Dee Slayman said, as
he directed the harvest on a roasting August morning. "But
I control the whole early deal: I own August and the first
week of September."
Although just a few pomegranate varieties are grown
commercially in California, several sources do maintain an
amazingly diverse range of exotic varieties.
The Agriculture Department's National Clonal Germplasm
Repository in Winters, west of Sacramento, has a collection
of 60 types of pomegranates, with red, yellow, orange and
greenish skins. Some are purely ornamental, with ruffled,
bright orange flowers but few or no fruit; others are sour
with tough, bony seeds.
Several, judging by a tasting last year at this time, have
rich fruity flavors and deserve wider interest. The Elf,
for example, has yellow skin and very sweet, translucent
blond seeds and juice with a sparkling tutti-frutti taste.
Many mavens maintain that such light-colored varieties,
rare in the United States, make the best eating. Spanish
Sweet, occasionally grown in backyards, has a yellow rind
blushed with pink, and white or light pink arils of
surpassing sweetness. It's different from red varieties in
the same way that low-acid white peaches differ from
traditional yellow types.
Farmers say that blond pomegranates can't be grown
commercially because they're very perishable, but a few
show up at farmers' markets, where they are especially
appreciated by Hispanic customers.
"When I bring them to market, people get really excited and
want to buy the whole box," said Lester Kirksey, who grows
20 trees of Spanish Sweet in Exeter.
In cool coastal areas, pomegranates are well adapted as
ornamental shrubs but usually bear sour fruit. S. John
Chater, who has become a legend among California rare fruit
growers, did not accept this situation: he bred
pomegranates in his Camarillo backyard for several decades
until his death last November, searching for new varieties
that would bear tasty fruit under mild conditions. A Golden
Globe, for example, as tasted last fall in his yard, is a
huge blond fruit with pink, honey-sweet arils that have
small, soft seeds.
Mr. Chater was a maintenance worker at a local hospital and
wrote unpublished books of philosophy, but his real passion
was pomegranates, which he delighted in sampling and
discussing with visitors. He patented his best-known
variety, Eversweet, which is available at some nurseries.
Dee Slayman, whose father, Michael Slayman, was also a
pomegranate grower and a friend of Mr. Chater's, took
clippings of half a dozen varieties, which he is
propagating and testing for their commercial potential.
Another enthusiast, Hossein Khodadad, operates a nursery
specializing in Iranian fruit varieties at his home in
Alamo, east of Oakland. Iran is to pomegranates what
Bordeaux is to wine, and people in California who are from
there often pooh-pooh American varieties like the
Wonderful.
When asked about the Saveh, Iran's most celebrated variety,
named for a city south of Tehran, Mr. Khodadad got a
faraway look in his eyes, as if transported to a paradise
with twinkling fountains and azure skies.
"It's big as a baby's head, has shiny purple skin, and so
sweet," he said, standing on a terrace tightly packed with
potted pomegranate and quince trees.
Mr. Khodadad said he had Saveh trees bearing fruit at
another location, and that an Afghan grower, Ahmad Shah
Afredi, had planted 1,000 young trees in the valley, in
Terra Bella. Three times last October this reporter sought
a taste of the legendary Saveh, but on each occasion,
because of some unfathomable misunderstanding, the fruit
proved mysteriously unavailable.
Just when it appeared the whole thing might be a hoax, a
package with 12 huge, gorgeous fruit arrived in the mail.
They had large dark juicy arils, small seeds and an
exquisite sweet-tart flavor - not much different from the
Wonderful.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
