“These are all winter melons. This one is called "old lady melon." It is very sweet, very soft,' Karim said, running his hand over the melon's tight folds. Round as a football, heavy and full, its skin was ribbed like thick corduroy, its wrinkly stalk curved as a coat hook. Taking his knife, Karim carved a sickle moon from the seaweed-green melon, exposing, almost indecently, the melon's flesh, creamy as magnolia. In the middle, a tightly packed jelly-ball of seeds-- unlike watermelons, which have their seeds scattered throughout-- managed to hold its form despite the cut. From this strange melon came a uniquely robust fruitiness, mixing overripe pear with Bourbon vanilla. He held up the melon proudly, an example of the fruit in its prime, the cross-section of its seed house, glistening in the sunshine. In Uzbekistan it is the trader who decides when a melon is ready. There are no stickers ordering the buyer to 'ripen at home'. He handed me the slithery wedge and I tried to unpick the flavors as grievous wasps landed drunkenly on the scattered rinds. First, sherbet. Then a little honey mixed with almond extract and, finally, pineapple and the smoothness of rum.” TasteScentOld LadyMelonsUzbekistanCreamy Book:Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels Source: Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
“Thick, pale golden juice burst like a tiny rain cloud, tart as a lime and sweet as a peach on my tongue. Full-bodied. A trickle dripped down my index finger, caught just in time, too prized to go to waste. I let Darwin lick it. The real thing, its brilliant sweetness, eaten miles from human habitation, acted as an intoxicating potion. Immediately, its taste unlocked the gates to other northern lands and, as the last of the sweet-sour flavor fizzed out on my tongue, overlaying images sped joyfully through my mind: birch forests, mountains, glittering lakes, snowy trains, windswept taiga. I lingered over that single cloudberry, cherishing it, more than caviar, more than whisky or truffles, more than anything else I had ever eaten, smoked or drunk before. Once it had gone, I felt only a little grief, convincing myself that the cloudberry-- surely the ultimate 'taste of place'-- was somehow a gift; I felt I had consumed its very northernness. It brought back the similar sensations of eating a pear in an orchard, a melon in a melon field, an apple in a grove, though nothing could really compare.” TasteFlavorSensationalRaritySweet And SourCloudberries Book:Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels Source: Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
“The scent, though, is its own feast. In the cutting and cubing of it, more of its hard-to-pin-down ambrosial smell is dispensed, rising up like fresh-cut grass melding with cool iris. Batting away the temptation to eat a few coral-red wedges over the sink, I indulge, instead, in the anticipation of pleasure, imagining how, when I finally get to it, the melon's singular watery crunchiness-- it is a cousin of the cucumber-- and its copious juiciness will be sorbet-like on the tongue, as fresh and awakening as a glass of soda.” TasteScentTurkishMelons Book:Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels Source: Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels