Tender, juicy Meyer lemon growing in popularity

The distinctive sour taste that most people associate with lemons isn't the case with the Meyer lemon. Believed to be a cross between a common lemon and the mandarin orange, it's a sweeter alternative to the more available Eureka and Lisbon lemons. The Eureka and Lisbon varieties of lemons are similar to each other and are commonly found in supermarkets because the fruit can be grown year-round and are easy to ship. "The Meyer lemon has a really good distinct flavor all of its own," said Jason Knight, owner of Knight's Tree Nursery in Elderwood. And the Meyer has more juice than the Eureka and Lisbon, Knight said. "The Meyer's texture inside is smooth, not coarse," Knight said. "They're softer and not as tough and they peel easy." Knight has been selling fruit trees at the Visalia Farmers Market for more than five years and kept receiving requests for Meyer lemon trees at his stand. A few years ago, he finally gave in and has sold about 80 trees a year since then.

Making a return

While the Meyer lemon tree can be found throughout California today, that wasn't the case shortly after it was introduced to the Unites States at the start of the 20th century by Frank Meyer, an agricultural explorer with the United States Department of Agriculture. In the 1940s, a virus name tristeza, Spanish for sadness, was discovered in the tree. Tristeza put large citrus groves at risk. California agriculture officials banned the Meyer from citrus-growing areas around the state. Lance Walheim, co-owner and vice president of variety development at California Citrus Specialties, said many of the trees were pulled out of commercial areas at the time. The Meyer lemon trees seen today are the disease-free, improved versions developed by the University of California, Riverside in the 1970s. California Citrus Specialties out of Springville, one of the biggest Meyer lemon distributors in the county, currently has 1,500 Meyer lemon trees in Exeter.

Despite its growing popularity in backyards and kitchens, the Meyer has not become a popular commercial fruit because of shipping problems, Walheim said. To fight the softness of the Meyer, Walheim said the fruit is picked often and they don't sit around in cold storage for long periods of time. In the Central Valley, the Meyer season goes from November to February. 'You can taste the lemon and the rind' With the Meyer, nothing goes to waste because the entire fruit can be used when cooking. The thin skin of the Meyer that makes shipping difficult can be a treat in the kitchen. Since the skin is edible, the zest can be used for flavoring on numerous dishes. For Knight, the Meyer makes the best lemon meringue pie. "The Lisbon lemon meringue pie I was making wasn't as good. I've gotten a lot more compliments since I switched to Meyer lemons," Knight said. "The more I increase the juice, the more they talked about it." The pie recipe Knight has developed has been changed multiple times since it was first made using Meyer lemons.

"Conventional pie recipes barely have any lemon, are bland and don't have the taste," Knight said. "In mine, you can taste the lemon and the rind." Knight, who also makes the crust from scratch, uses rice flour in his recipe because he said he can't have wheat. Because rice flour doesn't behave like wheat flour, it's suggested that a glass pie dish be used instead of a tin one and it be formed around the dish using your hands. "You can't roll it like wheat flour because it won't hold together," Knight said. "But the rice flour is equally as good." If wheat flour is preferred, Knight said it works just fine with the same recipe. "For cooking, you can't beat [Meyer lemons]. I don't even think about the other lemons anymore," he said.

Source: visaliatimesdelta.com