After a slow start to the season, the new year brings good tidings for fruit and veg, with tomatoes, in particular, painting the town red this January.
John Velluti, owner of Frank’s Fruit Market and Velluti’s – which supplies Sydney restaurants – says he hasn’t seen tomatoes “this good in ages”.
“We’ve had an absolute cracker of a tomato season and that looks like it’s continuing. Whatever you want you can get.”
From heirloom tomatoes, to oxhearts to tomatoes on the vine, recent warm and sunny conditions have led to abundant supply and low prices, with truss and vine-ripened tomatoes cheapest in supermarkets at $2.90 to $3.90 a kilo.
Use them today in David Atherton’s tomato and sourdough salad, or save them for the future by cooking up batches of passata to keep on hand.
Velutti also recommends zucchini and eggplant, good buys from December that remain strong. Why not take them all – your zucchini, eggplant and tomatoes (and the aforementioned homemade passata) – and try your hand at a Sicilian caponata?
Corn, too, is ready for barbecue season. In Gympie, Queensland, it is one of the top picks for January at local produce marketplace and cafe Farmer and Sun.
The owner, Trena Waugh, says that as crops are still recovering from the heat, humidity and drizzle of the last few months, “corn is really the only thing that grows really well … cucumbers too”.
“Because we grow it here, we sell five corn for $2.50,” says Waugh. Dress up corn on the cob by making cheesy, zesty and spicy Mexican elotes.
In supermarkets, sweetcorn in husks are about $1 each, and Lebanese cucumbers are less than $1 each or about $3.50 a kilo.
And if you’re still hesitant to buy loose leaves after December’s hallucinogenic spinach scare, iceberg and cos lettuces are go-to greens in January at $2.50 to $2.90 a head.
Stone fruit’s late arrival
Peaches, nectarines and apricots have started pouring in, with plums close behind. “We’ve had a little bit of a late start to the season because of the cold weather,” says Velluti.
“That was really noticeable with the Tasmanian cherries. Normally they arrive a week or so before Christmas, but they literally have just started arriving now.”
Nectarines and peaches can now be found in supermarkets between $3.50 to $4.50 a kilo, but Velluti’s pick of the season are apricots. “I’m really, really happy with the quality,” he says.
Apricots are more expensive than other stone fruit, at about $10 a kilo, so make the most of them with an apricot, limoncello and mascarpone pudding, if you’re entertaining.
In mangoes, pick pride
Mangoes are still the season’s biggest bargain, selling at supermarkets for as little as $1.90 each.
They’re “the only produce that hasn’t gone up in price that much [year on year]” says the owner Camberwell’s Fruit and Veg in Melbourne’s east, Robert Kogut.
Kogut sells four varieties of mango – honey gold, calypso, R2E2 and Kensington Pride. The last being the most popular. “Kensington Pride is the juiciest and the sweetest … R2E2 is nice and big … but it doesn’t have the sweetness.”
Pricey passionfruit
In other fruit, as a result of workforce shortages, fuel prices and wet weather, Kogut says some produce is still in short supply or can become “very scarce instantly”.
“I’ve been talking to fruiterers and people that have been in business for generations … and they say, ‘my father hasn’t seen anything like this. My grandfather hasn’t seen anything like this.’”
Passionfruit is particularly likely to raise an eyebrow at the checkout at up to $20 to $30 a kilo. In a normal season, it would be $9 to $10 a kilo at this time of year.
Grapes are not a sure bet either. “Normally we would have all varieties of grapes, in white and red, but right now we’re only seeing one variety instead of five or six or seven,” says Kogut.
Grapes have come down in price to about $8 or $9 a kilo since last month, but despite previously being volatile, berries are a better deal.
In Haberfield, Velluti says they are a safe choice for shoppers in January, with “no double digit prices”.
Punnets of blueberries ($1.90 to $2), raspberries ($3.50) and blackberries ($5.50) can be blitzed into Alison Roman’s no-churn semifreddo dessert or eaten straight out of the box. Strawberries remain cheap at $2 a punnet, but may not be of the quality or flavour consumers are used to.
If it is quality you’re after, Velluti suggests treating yourself: “The lychees are sensational.”
Though they’re not cheap – currently between $20 and $50 a kilo – you should still get in quick, as towards the end of January with the arrival of lunar new year, demand will drive prices higher.
Buy
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Eggplant
Limes: cheaper than lemons
Zucchini
Iceberg and cos lettuce
Apricots
Peaches
Nectarines
Plums
Mangoes
Blackberries
Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries
Corn
Grapes
Beetroot
Apples
Bananas
Watch
Watermelon: fluctuating in price
Cherries: late, and likely to remain expensive
Avoid
Figs
Passionfruit
Snow peas
Beans
Cauliflower
Lemons: out of season and expensive
Red capsicums: scarce, with most imported from New Zealand
Mandarins
Ruby grapefruit: out of season
Mandarins: out of season
Blood oranges: out of season
