I WAS seeing them after a long, long time and of course I couldn’t take my eyes of them! These extremely orange baby Mandarins snuggled up against each other in a netted see-through bag at the Caculo Mall Magsons…real cute baby oranges, mini oranges. Of course I buy a bag full even at Rs250 a kg and then I was wondering how to juice them and kind of kept looking at them but forgot to eat them until they kind of dried up a bit over the week. Then I ate them, delicately peeling each one by one and popping the pretty soft orange in my mouth…no seeds, and oh such an exciting burst of tangerine flavor!
One by one I peeled all the Mandarins and savored their intense orange flavor. My goodness, after a week they retained their flavor and didn’t spoil like many of the big oranges do. Perhaps these were organically grown Mandarin babies. I went looking for more almost every day but the boys at Magsons kept telling me their season is short, they may or not get more stocks…wait and see. I managed to get another bag full of these baby Mandarins but distributed them on New Year’s night to friends.
Honestly, the winter season or whatever there is of it comes alive for me when the oranges come into the market – both our divine Nagpur santra and Maltas and several imported varieties, see them all out at Magsons these days. Can you differentiate an orange from a tangerine? Oranges I think have more of the sours in them and more vitamin C, the tangerines and mandarins are more intense in flavor and richly tangibly sweet. Tangerines tend to be smaller and oh yes, I learn there must be something like a dozen varieties of oranges or citrus varieties as some say.
There are navel oranges, clementines, tangerines, honey tangerines, mandarins, ever heard of blood red oranges, the Seville oranges of Spain make some of the most tempting bitter sweet marmalade (once upon a time my favorite confection although it’s years since I’ve eaten a good marmalade)…like butter your toast and then spread Seville marmalade generously atop it and enjoy on a cold sunshine filled morning up in the mountains of the Himalaya!
The world of oranges is exciting right now so go look for oranges large, medium and little and if you see the baby mandarins do buy them, you’ll be surprised how fantabulous they are to look at and savor. Dry out their peel and make into a bath scrub, I used to do that once upon a time and it left my skin scented with oranges.