I'm back in San Francisco and have a new late-summer obsession: the lemon cucumber. In the current climate of multiculturalism and fusion, it may seem a little trendy to be enamored of a piece of produce that boasts the vaguely exotic yet familiar allure of the hybrid, the indeterminate, the mestizo, but this fruit masquerading as a vegetable disguised as a fruit (a kind of double drag, F to V to F) has been lurking about farmers markets since 1894. I found these little guys at the Noe Valley Farmers market and also saw them at the Ferry Building. My friend Zoe first suggested them to me after she saw them in Israel this summer.
Unlike the pluot or aprium, which are true cross-bred composites of separate fruits, this apple-cheeked salad stuffer is indeed a cucumber that merely resembles a brightly sour lemon and is actually slightly sweeter than other cucumbers. Like its relatives, the gourd and the squash, the cucumber is classified as a fruit for having enclosed seeds and developing from a flower but is associated with vegetables for its more neutral flavor and use in savory dishes (thanks Wikipedia!).
A question that has come up often since we started this blog is, "What exactly is a vegetable?" and I was reluctant to investigate the answer for fear that it would limit the specimens I could honestly post on the site without feeling self-indulgent. But the doors have been thrown wide open thanks again to my favorite unofficial Wiki-research site (our backroom team of Weird Vegetable fact-checkers are falling off their swivel chairs in horror), which informs us that "the term 'vegetable' generally means the edible parts of plants" and that the "definition of the word is traditional rather than scientific," based more on cultural associations, culinary uses, and food retailing, making its usage "somewhat arbitrary and subjective." So there. Anything edible from a plant goes. Viva la Vegetable!
5 comments:
I'm fine with traditional definitions, rather than scientific -- according to the scientific definition, wheat is a fruit, so clearly that definition isn't helping much -- but still: what do you mean by "the edible parts of plants"? I mean, how is that not everything? What's a blackberry? Or is the berry not "part" of a "plant" somehow? And if so, the traditional definition might not help us much either. Perhaps it's time for an exclusive wv.blgspt.com definition.
Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. I'm in the countryside and the sun in shining in my eyes.
Dear e h,
I am warmed by the fervence of your desire for a more enlightened relationship to the world of produce. I think one conclusion we can come to is that definitions are always imperfect contingencies that help us navigate the world and its many communities but only up to a certain point, after which blind adherence to a prescribed set of categories seems silly, and perhaps even fascist in the worst of cases.
In my rube-like understanding, a berry can be considered as both a fruit *and* a vegetable, fruits being an exclusive subset of the more democratic vegetable universe, which embraces all the various misfits and rag-tag hangers-on that can be considered both edible and plant. So if some poor seed pod or succulent is feeling left out, all you have to do is eat it to get the little guy into the club.
I wish I were in the countryside right now, though the city sun is still shining in my eyes.
Yours in vegetable harmony,
Katrina
On one hand, I applaud your rejection of empty distinctions and fascist prescriptions. On other other, your apparent compromise is actually a thinly disguised grab at vegetabolic hegemony. Fruits are but a subset of a vegetable universe? Tell that to my juicy peach. Who's to say it isn't the other way around -- your carrots and cukes are among the fruit of the earth?
In any case, I propose instead the creation of a formula integrating the relevant characteristics, no one feature determinant in itself but as a whole generating a placement on the f vs v spectrum. For example: q = (2x + y) * 1/2, where x is the traditional societal understanding, y the scientific definition (seeds and whatnot), and q is a fruit/vegetable quotient. The formula needs lots of refinement, of course, but isn't that what blogs are for?
I think my head just exploded in a spray of watermelon seeds.
Would like to paint before tasting them;-)
Post a Comment