To All,
During a routine trip to Market Basket on 6 Aug 2015, I saw that they had galia melons (PLU #4326). I had frequently seen these melons but had always resisted them. I decided, however, that it was time to continue the death march through the melons. My melon cost $1.29 per pound, so at 4.40 pounds the total cost was $5.68.
It is an empirical fact that the melons have bigger and showier PLU stickers than other fruits, though, compared to other melons, the galia sticker is quite subdued. Presumably these bigger stickers reflect that the bigger melons can support this level of ornateness; it would be pretentious of an orange to have such a big sticker. Below is a detail from the work-in-progress "Sticker Shock VI" that shows the galia sticker.
Here are my pictures.
- The entire melon.
- Close-up of the reticulation. This makes it clear that the galia is a muskmelon (see e-mail of 28 Jun 2015).
- Halves. It is always a moment of excitement when you cut a new melon open and see the color of the inside. In this case, the galia looks much like the honeydew melon with its pale green interior.
- One of the halves cut into eighths. The seeds and rind have been removed; this proved easy to do with a paring knife. The difficulty was that the transition from rind to meat was gradual, so it was hard to know exactly where to slice to remove the rind. My eating strategy was to pick a segment up in my hands, bite into it, and keep eating until it was gone.
I picked up a slice and ate it. Since it looked like a honeydew melon, and since I am lukewarm on honeydew melons, I had low expectations, which the galia surpassed. It did not taste like a honeydew. It had a taste all its own that was small but nice. This melon did not knock me out, but it is pleasant to eat. It was quite juicy; it didn't make a big mess, but it did drip a bit on my cutting board as I ate standing up. (After the cut melon had sat in my fridge for several days, the taste was stronger and it was much juicier. After eating a quarter, my plate was awash with juice, and on the table there were drops of splattered juice that had missed the plate. The lesson is that if you are entertaining the Queen, you should serve this melon right after cutting it rather than letting it age in the fridge for a few days after cutting it.)
The verdict: This is not the melon of my dreams, but it's a nice change of pace that I might try once a year.
This hybrid melon was developed in the 1970s by Israeli melon breeder Zvi Karchi, who named it after his daughter. The galia is adapted to desert conditions, and, like cherries (11 Jul 2015), it is important that it gets no rainfall during the melon's maturity since the melon absorbs moisture, and this reduces its flavor. While Florida has the heat and sunshine that this melon requires, it also has rain. To deal with this, the University of Florida has developed methods of growing it in Florida that involve growing the melon in greenhouses or above-ground tunnels. The developer of these methods was interviewed in 2002:
"If it's grown right, Galia is the best melon you'll ever taste," said Dan Cantliffe, professor with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "It's similar to cantaloupe but with a sweeter, more intense flavor."
This sweeping overstatement by a fruit developer is becoming a familiar story. We saw it previously in the discussion of the gold nugget (4 Apr 2015). (This paragraph is based on a University of Florida press release.) (Are you intrigued to find out that melon breeder is an occupation? This sounds like a potential retirement activity. When perusing the classifieds, I have never seen an opening for a melon breeder, though at Market Basket I have seen signs advertising jobs for donut bakers and cake decorators.)
You might be wondering what the parents of the galia are. I don't recognize the specific cultivars that are the parents, but apparently one is a cantaloupe cultivar (this provides the reticulated surface) and the other is a honeydew cultivar (this provides the color of the meat). The taste, however, is not a mix of cantaloupe and honeydew but, to my taste buds, is a new and different taste.
Here's your party tip. Next summer, instead of growing the same tomatoes and green peppers as everyone else, picture yourself as a mad scientist melon breeder, picking and choosing from the wealth of available melon cultivars and crossing various pairs and seeing what you get. Once you harvest your creations, invite your friends to a Mystery Melon Party. Cut up your newly hatched melons, let your friends taste test them, and record their reactions to the first ever tastings of these new melons. Let your guests name the new melons. Later, on your party website post pictures, descriptions, and the process used to grow each melon. Provide seeds to agricultural stations. As time passes your guests will be able to follow the future development and perhaps marketing of the melons that they were the first to experience, and they will have the satisfaction of knowing that they were present at the creation. In addition, a guest might find that the new rage in the supermarket has been named after his or her daughter. Use your royalties to pay for future parties.
Rick
P.S. In the e-mail of 1 Aug 2015, I reported a discoloration of my Tuscan melon. Maria has convinced me that the problem was not overripeness but freezer burn. Not only does freezer burn fit the symptom, but it is highly plausible since my refrigerator has been acting erratically lately; for example, it froze a carton of yogurt solid. These problems are no surprise since I have had this fridge for forty years, and it was used when I got it. A problem in my future is that the color scheme of my kitchen, including the fridge, is avocado. This color is no longer in fashion, so if my fridge breaks and needs to be replaced, I will lose the color coordination in my kitchen. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that my fridge hangs on until avocado comes back into fashion. By the way, I am not the only one with this problem. According to an article in The New Yorker, "For decades, a running joke among color professionals had been the avocado-hued kitchen appliances of the nineteen-seventies. (The refrigerators outlasted the color's popularity, creating a vicious backlash.)" [Konigsberg, pp. 42-43] Maybe I can join a support group. You can see my stylish avocado color scheme in the picture below, which shows my avocado refrigerator, avocado stove, and avocado trim. (You can also see a little bit of avocado trim in the background of the picture above of the entire melon.)
References
Konigsberg, Eric, "Made in the Shade: How wasabi became the new black, and other tales from the color industry," The New Yorker, 22 January 2007, pp. 42-49.
