Green Almonds

a personal rite of spring

I must have learnt to eat green almonds as a child in Beirut although I don’t remember eating them there. But I must have remembered eating them because I knew what they were and relished picking them off the tree that grew in the grounds at my school in Rome. I don’t think they are a common thing to eat in Italy as I never saw Italians eating them. I am always thrilled to be in Italy between April and May when the almonds first come out and are edible husk and all. The outside is green crunchy and tart and a little fuzzy and inside is an unformed still gelatinized nut. As the nuts grow the outer skin forms into a hard shell and the nut inside hardens into what we know as an almond. They are eaten in Lebanon in the spring, raw just dipped in a little salt and sumac as a snack or nibble before the meal and I have seen them pickled in Istanbul which is what I usually do with them. When I lived in NYC they were available usually for a couple weeks in the Arab neighborhoods and I would always grab a few pounds to remind me of spring in the mediterranean where green things start growing by mid February and fresh fava beans hit the table in March.

Although born in the US to American parents I did not live in the US until I was 15, sent from decadent beautiful Rome to nowhere Maine for boarding school. I had always identified as an American from Maine, and it was a rude awakening in so many ways to realize I did not relate at all to my compatriots (yet neither am I Italian). In fact I spent my 20’s figuring out that abrupt disruption in mid adolescence where we went from fabulous expats living in a renaissance palace in Rome with a house in the Tuscan countryside on the weekends to quite poor hippies living in a small cape in rural mid coast Maine with an ancient Finnish sauna attached to it where the water in the house smelt like sulphur and colored all the sinks and toilets orange with residual iron in the water.

I definitely learned to pay attention to food and eventually how to cook after I went to school in Maine. I hadn’t ever really thought about the food we ate before then- where it came from, how it was grown or even how it was transformed from something living to something nourishing on the plate. But I certainly noticed the absence of fresh seasonal food I had grown up eating. Blood oranges in the winter pressed to order at every café in Rome, tomatoes only in the summer, fresh peas from the roman countryside in early June. Of course this seasonality has changed in Italy too where all produce with the exception of a few things are sold all year today. Going from Italy’s seasonal abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables to the United States that was still firmly ensnared in industrial foods developed as a miracle of convenience in the 50’s was a shock. In those years even whole heads of garlic and cans of olive oil were hard to come by in an American supermarket in rural Maine. You could find 50 different kinds of cereal but based on the evidence in the produce aisle not many Mainers were eating garlic or much of anything fresh or delicious.

Green almonds remain an exciting rite of spring for me even though I live in Maine again as an adult (joyously and by choice). While the variety of products available in Maine and the US today is so much more than those early days of exile green almonds are not one of them. I cheat and get them shipped in from a Persian grocery store in LA. I spend a few days nibbling on them and then pickle them in a Turkish brine to adorn something special in the summer.

I spend most of my spring in Maine watching online as friends who still live in the Mediterranean relish the springs gifts- mimosa flowers with their intoxicating aroma and bright yellow powder puff of blossoms in late February followed by green fava beans and asparagus while I am still squinting at the cold hard dirt to see if maybe just maybe the lovage is cautiously starting to break through. True spring here when fiddleheads and asparagus start to be available doesn’t really happen until the middle of May. So, I am hungry for spring and spring vegetables even if it snowed yesterday and I am curled up inside by the wood stove dreaming of spring in the mediterranean. I will cherish ramps when they start to appear, the pungent onion flavor brightening up a palate grown dull on root vegetables and squash. I’ve been known to stalk the vegetable stand that will have local asparagus and the most perfect little peas first. I can’t wait to shuck those peas and serve them with just a crumble of crisp pancetta and olive oil in the Roman way, a leaf or two of fresh mint wilted in to the mix.

And so every spring as I try to force the season in my north Atlantic climate I bite the bullet and insist on buying rare ingredients from far away to jump start my inspiration. I eat seasonally but I must admit there are moments like now where I am so grateful for global trade. I often buy a case of pixie tangerines from a farm in Ojai California because nothing at the supermarket tastes as good, I might go so far as to order a fat bunch of asparagus from a farm in Florida eager to enjoy juicy grassy asparagus at the easter table and I always buy a pound or two of green almonds to eat and be reminded of earlier springs and all the promise they bring with them.