The World’s Most Difficult Fruits  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Why Fruits Become 'Difficult'** - Kate Lebo frames 'difficult fruits' as those that resist mass-market systems and require special handling. - Their rarity and demands explain why flavors and varieties disappear from common diets. Transcript: Christopher Kimball Right now, it's my conversation with Kate Lebo, author of The Book of Difficult Fruit. It features 26 essays about fruits that are hard to find, harvest, prepare, or just plain hard to love. Kate, welcome to Milk Street. Thanks so much for having me. First off, I absolutely loved your book. Thank you. The writing's amazing, and it was surprising because it really is a very different book than I thought. It's about fruit, but you also talk about how your mother had a history of migraines, how you suffer from some chronic illness yourself, which sounds actually like it informs your relationship To both food as well as difficulty, right? Yes. Kate Lebo You know, I think that I feel like my relationship to food is bifurcated. On one hand, I just love making things. And, you know, where some people might want to climb a mountain to get a good view, I would like to do the same repetitive task with a raw material of food to achieve a flavor. So that's one end of how I think about food. But then on the other, my mother really taught me to think about food as medicine. She has had chronic illness my entire life and most of her entire life. And the mysteries of chronic illness and the frustrations of it, the way that you go to the doctor and they can't really tell you what's wrong with you. They can't really tell you exactly what to do, but to try this, try this, try this, really led her to trying to get better through diet, through healthy diets, through different kind Of medicinal fad diets. And it was never about losing weight. It was about trying to feel better and trying to be pain-free. Christopher Kimball Yeah, I want to follow up on that because my mother-in was ill for a number of years and tried everything. My wife loves trying food as medicine and goes through different, I won't say fads, but different programs. And you never get to the point where you have a solution, right? You have hints or hopes of things that get better for a while and they don't get better. Is that your experience? Yeah, absolutely. Kate Lebo And I think through observing my mother and through having my own issues, trying to find a food solution for myself and failing, but then also through writing this book, I really started To understand that a solution is never what food and diet offers, or at least it wasn't going to offer me and my loved ones. But a practice around eating that evolves because of the attention that I'm paying to it, that is healing. And that can promote well-being. Maybe it doesn't cure me of my illness, but it gives me a bit of control. It helps me kind of stay connected to my body, to what I eat. So it's just this delicate balance that feels typified in this relationship, as I understand it, between medicine and poison, and that often it's the same source. ([Time 0:22:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d7282b4f-cd1e-460a-ab57-5ada0142bd33)) - **Treat Food As Practice, Not Cure** - Build a healing food practice rather than searching for a miracle diet to cure chronic illness. - Use attention to eating to gain control and promote well-being even without definitive cures. Transcript: Kate Lebo Absolutely. And I think through observing my mother and through having my own issues, trying to find a food solution for myself and failing, but then also through writing this book, I really started To understand that a solution is never what food and diet offers, or at least it wasn't going to offer me and my loved ones. But a practice around eating that evolves because of the attention that I'm paying to it, that is healing. And that can promote well-being. Maybe it doesn't cure me of my illness, but it gives me a bit of control. It helps me kind of stay connected to my body, to what I eat. ([Time 0:25:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0075c789-7805-4f37-b584-831cc8f0c47c)) - **Cook Time Can Rescue Old Fruits** - Recognize fruits like quince need long cooking to become palatable instead of dismissing them. - Invest time in appropriate techniques to recover lost flavors from heirloom produce. Transcript: Kate Lebo Is so astringent and so sour and needs such a long time cooking that the ways that most of us cook in today doesn't allow for that kind of taste. ([Time 0:26:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26f01b07-d801-436b-8439-be4f160d28d2)) - **Eating Medlars Requires Bledding** - Kate Lebo recounts discovering medlars and the process called bledding that ripens them into edible form. - She describes eating medlars both bledded on a tree and in her basement, favoring the outdoor version. Transcript: Kate Lebo What a medlar is? First of all. Really beautiful cream blossoms. And its fruit looks like an oversized rose hip. And you're not supposed to eat it until after it has rotted a little bit. And that's a process called bledding. Christopher Kimball Where does that term, I saw the term bledding. I never heard that before. Is that an old-fashioned horticultural term? It must be. You know, I didn't look it up. I just started using it as if I knew what it was. True writer. Kate Lebo Right? It was such a great word. And you could say my obsession with meddler really came from that word and that I could apply this new idea. You would eat something that's rotten, that bledded. And I've eaten them when they've been bledded outdoors on the tree. And I've eaten them when I bledded them my basement. And the one outdoors on the tree is preferable. There's a little bit of fermentation and mold that I think that needs to happen to really get the full meddler experience. And I wouldn't say that it's delicious. ([Time 0:27:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5a5ef837-2a5e-43cf-b5df-75375a8c2f97)) - **Stone Fruit Kernels Have Risks** - Beware stone fruit kernels: they contain benzaldehyde (almond flavor) and amygdalin that can form cyanide. - Avoid eating kernels in quantity and crack them open only with caution. Transcript: Christopher Kimball Are you talking about mollib? Yes, yes, mollib. And so what is it that gives the inside of cherry pits an almond flavor? Kate Lebo So all cherry pits, all stone fruits, have an almond flavor to them. I think it's benzaldehyde is what that's called. And it's non-toxic and delicious. They also contain amygdalin, which, when it combines with the moisture in your body, becomes cyanide. So not so good news. That's good. Fun, right? So you have to be careful. And it's not the pit, it's the kernel you have to worry about. But if you crack it open, get that kernel out, that's where you have to be careful. And I've tasted cherry kernels, I've tasted apricot kernels, just, you know, one at a time to try it. And it's really delicious almond, very bitter flavor. ([Time 0:28:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e2314056-b16d-4272-bb18-5889fa55494f)) - **Huckleberry Means Different Things** - 'Huckleberry' refers to different berries by region and era, sometimes equating to wild blueberries. - Flavor, size, and sweetness vary widely between Pacific Northwest and eastern varieties. Transcript: Kate Lebo Well, you know, it changes according to what coast you're on and what historical era we're talking about. So when I was doing my research, I looked at the Cyclopedia of Hardy Fruits. That's, let's see, it's Hedrick is the last name. And it came out of the Cornell Extension in like 1906 or something. And at that time, the huckleberries that Hedrick was describing were what you would call wild blueberries now. So people still make huckleberry pie. They just call it wild blueberry pie on the East Coast. On the West Coast, our huckleberries are of vaccinium. On the East Coast, it's galusacea. I'm probably not pronouncing that right, but close enough. Christopher Kimball Are they smaller than blueberries and not as sweet? Kate Lebo It depends. So if we're talking about my huckleberries, the huckleberries of the Pacific Northwest, the ones that are west of the Cascades are smaller than blueberries. They're not as sweet. They're very, very intense. I think they make just an absolutely divine pie. But they can be a little challenging to eat straight. The huckleberries that grow on the east side of the Cascades, where it's a lot drier, those are fatter. Those are closer to the size of blueberries and have a milder flavor. ([Time 0:29:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c1dd90b-bba0-40c8-874c-aacc016396aa)) - **Yuzu Shines In Zest, Not Flesh** - Kate praises yuzu for its perfumed rind and marmalade potential despite scant flesh. - She values yuzu's epicarp and pith for intense aroma and natural pectin in marmalade making. Transcript: Kate Lebo Has it not reached its culinary stardom yet? Christopher Kimball I think it may. It's close. Kate Lebo Where's Yuzu's publicist to tell us we need to eat it? But no, Yuzu, it smells so great. And it's such an interesting citrus fruit, I think, because, I mean, again, the way that I'm used to encountering citrus fruit comes from the grocery store. So I think of the peel as just this case that I have to struggle to get off of the thing I actually want, which is the fruit in the middle. And with yuzu, usually the fruit is, it's just not, there's not much of it there. It's kind of desiccated. It's not delicious. That's not the point. The point is the rind, the zest, and all layers of citrus contribute something to marmalade making, and I love that. So the zest on the outside, I believe that's called the epicarp. You peel that off, and you'll get a delicious flavor if you can dilute it enough with juice and with sugar. And the pith, of course, is really important for thickening a marmalade. There's so much natural pectin in that pith. ([Time 0:31:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/960194e6-9d2b-4c40-aed8-8ba15625fbfe)) - **Failure Teaches Appreciation** - Studying difficult fruits taught Lebo resilience through repeated failures to find, cook, and understand them. - She argues that loving difficulty deepens relationships with nature and people. Transcript: Kate Lebo I failed a lot with them. I failed to find them. I failed to understand them. I failed to cook well with them. And each of those failures led to further attempts. And each of those failures also taught me something about those fruits. Christopher Kimball You learn to love difficult things. Does that translate into people or does that translate into any other part of your life? Kate Lebo Yeah, I mean, I think, and you love things for their difficulty, but their difficulty is inextricable from what they are. And I guess I'm talking about plants and people here. I mean, I really grew a much closer relationship to the natural world through food and through studying all of these fruits. And I think the same can go for really trying to understand all of our individual difficulties as people, and the ways that we that we fail each other, and how to not just for not just forgive, But try to, I don't know, understand the roots of those failures because they're probably tangled with our own. ([Time 0:33:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb5fe555-8461-481f-919b-ef8d06aeece9)) - **Difficulty Deepens Relationships** - Lebo links loving difficult fruits with loving difficult people by learning roots of failures. - She suggests understanding difficulty fosters deeper relationships and forgiveness. Transcript: Christopher Kimball You learn to love difficult things. Does that translate into people or does that translate into any other part of your life? Kate Lebo Yeah, I mean, I think, and you love things for their difficulty, but their difficulty is inextricable from what they are. And I guess I'm talking about plants and people here. I mean, I really grew a much closer relationship to the natural world through food and through studying all of these fruits. ([Time 0:33:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c47179bb-404a-489d-a8c1-3b36b5d6b7df)) - **Supermarket Uniformity Risks Taste Extinction** - Chris Kimball and Kate note modern grocery norms favor uniform, perfect produce over heirloom diversity. - That preference accelerates taste extinction and reduces culinary variety. Transcript: Christopher Kimball And I always think about heirloom apples is really a good metaphor for what's wrong with food today, right? We want the one perfect thing, but we're not willing to put up with any trouble or difficulty or work to get there. Kate Lebo And as a result, tastes go extinct along with fruits. I love the rebellion within the seed of an apple, the way that if you plant just an apple core, that tree will not grow true to its parents. Right. Christopher Kimball I love that. Yeah. You're going to, you're going to get something else. Kate Lebo And that's true humans also. Christopher Kimball And it's the imperfect ones that are always worth the trouble. ([Time 0:34:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/59c75b09-0db4-4328-9d4c-8166a436f6cb))