Brisbane Market Report 292

Brisbane Produce Report – 17 December

  December 17, 2021  strump

It is gearing up to be a fine Queensland summer with all summer fruit at its best for both quality and taste. It wouldn’t be a Queensland summer without juicy plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots and mangoes, all currently in great supply and eating at their very best.

Choose peaches that are firm but have some ‘give’ when you gently squeeze them. When choosing apricots, pick ones that are firm but not hard. Avoid fruit that is overly soft and go for flavour and aroma over appearance. Rival apricots are great for eating fresh this week or preserving.

The tropical theme continues with Queensland-grown seedless grapes, cavendish bananas, topless pineapples, and orange candy melons plentiful and great eating, making a fabulous combination for a fresh summer fruit salad! Don’t forget papaya and pawpaw available from Far North Queensland. Also don’t forget to get into your local fruit & veg shops to enjoy the cherry season while you can as it is short – only 100 days.

Hass avocados mainly from Western Australia and New Zealand are plentiful and continue to be exceptional quality. Raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, coming mainly from the southern states, are all well-supplied and reasonably priced. Lemons are dearer, as a drop in local supply has been replaced by imports mainly coming from Egypt and California, but locally grown limes are plentiful and considerably cheaper than lemons.

There’s a good supply and variety of lychees hitting the market this week from North Queensland. Although all varieties of lychees are flavoursome, you can expect to pay more for fruit with smaller seeds. Lychee flesh is sweet and tangy, and they are the perfect addition to salads or desserts. Peel off the skin before eating and suck the flesh from the seed. The lychee is ripe when the inedible outer skin turns from green to red, or pink/red in colour.

Make a quick stir-fry with great quality red, green, orange, and yellow capsicums that are improving in supply, as are snow peas, sugar snap peas, egg plant, zucchini, broccoli and carrots coming from down south. Add some fresh garlic, ginger, and selection of herbs, particularly coriander and continental parsley, from Victoria. You can’t go wrong with sweet potatoes from South East Queensland, or why not try corn, coming from Gatton and Bundaberg, asparagus and cherry tomatoes which are all delicious grilled on the barbeque as part of a great outdoor summer meal.

Queensland-grown cos lettuce, iceberg lettuce, cabbage and silver beet or chard are in short supply due to the recent heavy rain, whilst we continue to rely on our southern counterparts for improved supplies of spinach, rocket and kale.

This week’s hero is the juiciest of stone fruit – plums – which are widely available in different varieties and sizes. Select smooth-skinned, shiny fruit with a flavoursome aroma that yields to gentle pressure. The redder the flesh of the plum, the more radical-fighting antioxidants present in it. Plums are delightful eaten raw, poached or made into marinades, desserts, or chutneys.

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