A great way to brighten up your winter dining!
By Ari Weinzweig
Sometimes things that seem super simple turn out to take a long time to make happen. I should know that. It’s like Natural Law #11 says: “It generally takes a lot longer to make something great happen than people think.” After trying for many years, we now have some of the more special California citrus we’ve been trying to get our hands on for ages! It was worth the wait! Unlike commercial citrus, these have a limited growing season—a season that might go only for a matter of weeks now—and a whole lot more flavor!
Where we are getting our citrus from.
Much of it is coming to us from the remarkable Rising C Ranch. In 1988, Eric and Kim Christensen purchased an orange grove outside of Reedley, California. Reedley is 22 miles to the southeast of Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. The town is named for Thomas Reed, a Civil War veteran who moved west to farm. Later in life, Reed donated roughly half his land holdings to the township. Today, the town has the moniker of “The World’s Fruit Basket,” and the Rising C Ranch citrus certainly helps fill that bill.
After buying the farm nearly 40 years ago now, the Christensens quickly decided that they could pack and sell some of the great fruit they were growing without following the usual route that runs through large-scale packing houses. Their food philosophy is very aligned with ours—they work with old varieties, flavor comes before finance, and they only sell properly tree-ripened fruit (a lot of fruit is picked early to save money and time). People all over the place sing their praises, and for good reason. Their oranges really are outstanding!
About the heirloom oranges from Rising C Ranch
Most commercially available oranges today are modern adaptations, hybrids developed to be blemish-free for better appearance, higher yields, lower costs, improved shipability, and longer shelf life. What we’re getting from Rising C Ranch predates all of that. The navel orange originated in a monastery in Bahia, northeast Brazil, in the early 19th century. The heirloom navel oranges we now have in-house are direct descendants of those first navels brought from Brazil to the American West Coast in the 1880s. Cara Cara oranges, a distinct variety, originated in Venezuela and were introduced to California’s San Joaquin Valley about 50 years ago. Sweet, complex, and juicy … as many of the folks who love them say, they “taste like what an orange is supposed to taste like.”
We’re using this great citrus in a couple of ZCoB spots. At the Deli, there’s a super tasty Citrus Slaw that’s made with the heirloom navels, Cara Caras, and blood oranges along with grapefruit, cabbage, cilantro, almonds, and more. There’s also a lovely citrus salad called Grand Fennel-y that includes Cara Cara and blood oranges, fresh fennel, Greek Kalamata olives, sunflower seeds, spices, and then some!
At the Roadhouse, we put slices of heirloom navel oranges and Cara Caras on a bed of local spinach, top the salad with broken bits of barrel-aged Greek feta and toasted red walnuts (which come from Livermore, near San Francisco), and then dress it with a little vinaigrette. The salad is great, too, if you add some grilled Bay of Fundy salmon, grilled Amish chicken breast, or some of those beyond-wonderful wild-caught North Carolina shrimp.