Charentais Cantaloupe

Readers nominate the following varieties as their favorites: Charentais cantaloupes, bottle onions, Boothby's Blonde' cucumber and Noir de Crimee' tomato; plus a recipe for cucumber salad with paprika dressing.

By the Mother Earth News editors
August/September 2003

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Edited By Brook Elliot

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Great taste is one of the biggest reasons to grow your own garden, yet many of the best-tasting varieties are becoming hard to find because our current food system often values shelf life and shipping qualities more than taste and tenderness. MOTHER'S Cream of the Crops series presents outstanding varieties recommended by our readers.

Among many delicious melons that are too fragile to ship, the French cantaloupes are at the top of my list. Perfectly sized for a half-melon serving, the French Charentais types have thick, firm, orange flesh and a small seed cavity.

When ripe, their smooth, blue-green skin turns yellow, and the melons slip easily from their stems. If those signs of readiness are not enough, just the aroma of a ripe Charentais in the patch is a dead giveaway. The flavor is perfumed and tropically exotic, too — distinct from the more typical netted-skinned varieties.

Amy Goldman writes in her book, Melons For the Passionate Grower, that the Charentais is a type of melon (many commercial varieties exist) that originated in the Poitou-Charentes region of western France, circa 1920. "It is a refined cantaloupe," she says, "free of the blemishes and warts of its ancestors."

Although the new `Honey Girl' Charentais hybrid is improved slightly, with more disease resistance than the heirlooms, any Charentais type qualifies as excellent. But you won't fund them in any supermarkets because of their fragility, so you'll have to grow your own.

Seed is available from Cooks Garden [ www.cooksgarden.com; (800) 457-97031; Horus Botanicals [341 Mulberry; Salem, AR 725761; Le jardin du Gourmet [ www.ArtisticGardens.com; (802) 748-14461; and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds [ www.rareseeds.com; (417) 924-89171.

DAVID CAVAGNARO
Decorah, Iowa

Old-Fashoned Bottle Onion

This heirloom is a favorite among onion lovers who have tried it. The taste is not overly strong; it's spicy, without much heat, and most sweet varieties taste sickly when compared to this good-flavored one.

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