Our recent daily tips have included vegetables to cure the winter doldrums. That goes for fruits, too.

Take the Uniq fruit, wrinkled and rough with splotchy coloring and surface scarring. Its skin is wrapped very loosely over the pulp. It’s the shar-pei of fruits.

But Uniq tastes delicious: a cross of grapefruit and tangelo, a refreshing citrus taste that’s very juicy. It looks like a grapefruit’s great-grandfather (no disrespect, great-granddad). It has been sold under the brand name Ugli fruit since 1934.

And its thick, loose skin makes it much easier to peel than other citrus fruit.

It’s now in season. You can find the fruits ranging in size from a large orange to a large grapefruit, the color ranging from yellow mottled with lime green to darker green to light orange. You can smell the fragrance through the peel.

If you can’t find it locally, you can order the fruit from Melissas.com.
 
MORE FRUIT IN SEASON

Keep your eyes peeled for:

As with any recipe, there are numerous variations, including the addition of carrots, celery, green bell peppers, olives, potatoes, or raisins.

According to food writer Clifford A. Wright, the famed Italian dish may be of Spanish origin. He quotes the Sicilian food authority Pino Correnti, that the dish is derived from the Catalan word caponada, a similar type of relish

Th Catalan word means “something tied together like vines.” In Sicily, it first appears in 1709. Another contender is the word capón; capón de galera is a gazpacho or a caponata-like dish.

A Sicilian cuisine scholar, Giuseppe Coria, suggests that the word derives from the Latin caupo, tavern, which served cauponae, a tavern food for travelers.

Wright notes: “The earliest recipe I am familiar with of … a kind of caponata is the cappone di galera alla siciliana in Francesco Leonardi’s L’Apicio Moderno (The Modern Apicius), published in 1790. Here is his recipe:

Caponata moves from appetizer dip or spread to a sauce for fish or poultry. You can place the caponata on top of the protein or use it as a bed, as shown in this photo. Photo courtesy Olio e Piú | New York City.

Whatever the origin and ingredients, today’s caponata easily moves from antipasto relish (our grandmother favored it with crackers or toasted baguette slices) to the main plate.

This delicious and healthful garnish adds bright color to pale proteins. It works well on grilled, poached or sautéed fish, poultry or tofu.
 
RECIPE: EGGPLANT CAPONATA

Use fresh tomatoes in season. In the off season, use diced, canned tomatoes.

Caponata tastes best the day after it is made, once the flavors have had a chance to blend and mellow. The recipe can be made two days in advance and refrigerated, covered. It can also be frozen.

You can serve caponata warm, chilled or at room temperature, or cold.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. HEAT the oil in heavy pot over medium heat. Add the eggplant, onion and garlic. Sauté until the eggplant is soft and brown, about 15 minutes.

1. HEAT the oil in heavy pot over medium heat. Add the eggplant, onion and garlic. Sauté until the eggplant is soft and brown, about 15 minutes.

2. ADD the diced tomatoes, vinegar and drained capers. Cover and simmer until the eggplant and onion are very tender, about 12 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. SEASON the caponata to taste with salt and pepper. Mix in the basil. Transfer to a serving bowl. Sprinkle with toasted pine nuts.

This recipe was adapted from Epicurious.com.

 
MORE WAYS TO USE CAPONATA

Each year, we notice a hot new food trend. Often it’s a new flavor, blasting through everything from salad dressing to popcorn. Notable past flavor explosions like chipotle, jalapeño, and wasabi introduced new kinds of heat to the American palate. The current “it” flavor seems to be sriracha.
 
 
WHAT IS SRIRACHA?

Sriracha, pronounced see-RAH-jah, is a Thai hot chili sauce. It’s made from red chiles, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt; and is aged for three months or longer.

Unlike American hot sauces such as Tabasco, which are vinegar sauces that are infused with hot chiles, sriracha is primarily puréed chiles, making it a much thicker sauce.

The sauce is named after the coastal city of Si Racha in eastern Thailand, where it was first made and marketed. Different brands can be found in the Asian aisle of many supermarkets and in Asian groceries.

The most popular brand is Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (photo #1). It looks imported but it’s made by a California manufacturer (it was created in 1980 by Chinese-Vietnamese Californian).

It has a large rooster logo in the center of the bottle. The rooster has been knocked off by Red Rooster Louisiana Hot Sauce, a product of Louisiana-based Bruce Foods.

The Rooster’s ingredients are chiles, sugar, garlic, salt, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate and sodium bisulfite as preservatives, and xanthan gum, a thickening agent, emulsifier, and stabilizer that prevents ingredients from separating.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF SRIRACHA SAUCE

According to multiple sources, including an article in Bon Appétit, the sauce was made more than 80 years ago in by a local woman, Thanom Chakkapak.

She initially made the condiment for her family, and then for friends, to enjoy with the local seafood (think of it as a much hotter counterpart to American cocktail sauce). The recipe was an adaptation of a classic hot Chinese red jalapeño and garlic sauce (called chiu chow sauce or chao zhou sauce).

As is a common story in the specialty food business, they encouraged her to sell it commercially—and it became the best-selling chile sauce in Thailand.

In 1984, Ms. Chakkapak sold her business to a major food company, Thai Theparos Food Products.

According to multiple sources, including an article in Bon Appétit, the sauce was made more than 80 years ago in by a local woman, Thanom Chakkapak.

She initially made the condiment for her family, and then for friends, to enjoy with the local seafood (think of it as a much hotter counterpart to American cocktail sauce).

As is a common story in the specialty food business, they encouraged her to sell it commercially—and it became the best-selling chile sauce in Thailand.

In 1984, Ms. Chakkapak sold her business to a major food company, Thai Theparos Food Products.

[1] Rooster, the most popular sriracha brand in the U.S., is actually made in California (photo © Steven Depolo | Wikipedia).

[2] Tribe adds Asian-style hot sauce to Middle Eastern hummus. Photo of new Fiery Sriracha Hummus courtesy Tribe.

[3] Americans shake sriracha on everything, from chicken and fish to eggs and pizza (photo © Huy Fong Foods)

According to Andrea Nguyen, who wrote the article for Bon Appétit: Since Thailand does not adhere to one romanization system for Thai words, many variants have emerged, chosen by manufacturers who have created their own version of the original sauce.

However, the most commonly accepted spelling is sriracha.
 
 
NEW PRODUCT: TRIBE LIMITED EDITION FIERY SRIRACHA HUMMUS

Tribe’s latest hummus flavor, Limited Batch Fiery Sriracha, is heating up the hummus category when it hits grocery store shelves later this month.

In addition to blending sriracha sauce into the hummus, the flavor is topped with red pepper flakes for an extra splash of heat.

Is America going flavor-crazy with its hummus? According to Tribe, non-traditional hummus flavors represented nearly half of the total hummus sales in 2014! Discover more at TribeHummus.com.

NEW PRODUCT: PRETZEL CRISPS IN SRIRACHA LIME

Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps are one of our favorite ways to enjoy pretzels. We like them for dipping, topping, and pairing with soups and salads.

The brand’s bevy of flavors (Original, Buffalo Wing, Everything, Honey Mustard & Onion, Jalapeño Jack, Sesame) has been joined by new Sriracha Lime.

Discover more at PretzelCrisps.com.
 
More sriracha to watch for:

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

All you have to do is look for them—at specialty produce stores, farmers markets and online (check out Melissas.com and OmahaSteaks.com, among others).

What will you find? The bounty varies by region, but you can find these veggies nationwide:

 
*Typically, they’re available in orange, purple, red or yellow. You can also find white carrots and brown bell peppers and tomatoes.

A double salad: celery root remoulade topped with vinaigrette-dressed baby greens. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | Bittersweet Blog.

You may also be able to find:

 
Whether you use these veggies to make exciting salads, roast them for sides or more complicated vegetable recipes, most of these artisanal veggies will add color splashes to the table during the winter doldrums.

Proteins and starches tend to be brown or beige. That’s why you need the right veggies to enliven your meals.

There are countless vegetable recipes online; or treat yourself to a vegetable cookbook. Take a look at Williams-Sonoma’s Vegetable of the Day: 365 Recipes for Every Day of the Year.

Something similar goes for anything touted as wild shrimp or Gulf shrimp: There’s a 30% chance or more that it’s plain old farmed shrimp.

It’s easy to fall victim to seafood fraud, a costly problem that won’t go away because of unscrupulous suppliers. Restaurants and retailers are victims, and unwittingly sell cheaper, mislabled varieties to consumers.

The fraud exists when fish distributors deliberately mislable cheaper varieties for more expensive, popular ones. Imported basa and swai (whitefish species you’ve probably never heard of) are substituted for the much-in-demand grouper and snapper.

Why the bait-and-switch? Because there isn’t enough domestic supply of the desirable varieties. Imported “fakes” are substituted, and the difference only becomes clear only after the fish is cooked. The flavor and texture is simply not as good.

It’s easy to tell these varieties apart when they come out of the water. But once the fish is filleted, or the shrimp is cleaned, there is no head, scale, or other visual identifier to prove its variety.

It’s not that you won’t get an edible piece of fish. It has no deleterious effect. But it won’t taste as good as the original, and you’ll the price of the better species.
 
Studies & Solutions

Grouper is a very popular fish, but unscrupulous dealers sell cheaper fish and claim it’s grouper. Photo of fennel-crusted grouper courtesy McCormick. Here’s the recipe.

Last year, Oceana looked at 1,200 fish samples from across the U.S. and found that roughly one-third were mislabeled according to FDA standards. A separate study of shrimp, America’s most-consumed fish or seafood, showed that 31% of restaurants sold misrepresented products, while 41% of retail markets sold misrepresented products.

Whatever species is being mislabled, retailers and restaurants get duped off as well as the consumer. Everyone overpays for lesser-quality fish and shellfish. Consumers, finding their dish less palatable than they had hoped, can bash the establishment online. Everyone loses.

The FDA says that slow progress is being made on the mislabeling front. A presidential task force is looking at the problem.

But there is hope around the corner for fans of grouper.

Checking The RNA Of The Fillet

Researchers at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science have come up with a solution to the grouper problem. Their new product, GrouperChek, is a handheld sensor capable of sniffing out fish fraud on the fly.

Wholesalers and others can assay seafood samples using real-time nucleic acid sequence-based amplification. The instrument identifies whether the RNA is a match.

The researchers say the device is so sensitive, it can detect fake grouper even after the fish has been cooked, breaded and sauced.

Hopefully, now, the seafood supplier will do this testing before agreeing to buy the fish.
And hopefully, devices will be developed to test shrimp and other often-misrepresented species. Finally, there may be a cessation of the passing off of inferior species, which causes restaurants and retailers to unwittingly mislead and overcharge customers.