Blood Orange Tart with Cardamom Cream

Citrus season is one of my favorite times of the year. Who can resist a box of Cuties? Meyer lemons, key limes, fresh grapefruit? For show, though, you can’t beat a blood orange. With red flesh and their reddish-orange peels, they almost belong more with Halloween than January. These beauties, which are slightly more tart than their navel cousins, look amazing in salads or desserts.

The red color comes from anthocyanins, the same compounds that make blueberries an antioxidant superfood. Like other citrus, they are also high in vitamin C, a lack of which causes scurvy. Today, most people eat enough fruits and vegetables to avoid scurvy, but historically this was not always the case. In particular, sailors and others who took long sea voyages often got scurvy, which was characterized by weakness, fatigue, bleeding gums, and anemia. Scottish physician James Lind discovered that citrus could effectively treat and prevent scurvy in 1747, but it wasn’t until 1795 that the British started requiring lemon juice to be distributed to sailors. Later, they switched to (less effective) West Indian limes since they were farmed on British plantations, earning British sailors the nickname “Limeys.”

A darker side of Lind’s discovery is its connection with the rise of the Sicilian mafia. Sicily’s location in the central Mediterranean makes it excellent for growing citrus. This same location meant that over time, Sicily had been controlled by many different countries, including the Greeks, Romans, Arabs (who introduced bitter oranges to the island), Normans, Spanish, and the French. Political instability and a decentralization of power to feudal lords resulted in popular revolts, political insecurity and a weak rule of law under which bandits thrived. These conditions facilitated the development of private security guards called campieri. Ironically, people seeking protection often hired a campiere from among the ranks of bandits. People who could not afford private security found themselves victimized by the robbers and forced to pay money to reclaim their own stolen goods.

This corrupt system legitimized the mafioso, which initially referred to a courageous person who stood up against the brigands and campieri. But, as shown by three economists, international demand for citrus made citrus theft far more profitable, so that at some point, mafiosi services switched from protection to extortion. The mafia also acted as intermediaries between growers and exporters, and manipulated market prices. Blood orange kind of takes on a whole new meaning in that context.

Regardless of citrus history, it is hard to ignore the lure of blood oranges in January. I started this tart by cutting super-thin slices of orange on a mandoline, candying them, and letting them dry on a wire rack.

My Instagram feed has been filled with references to cardamom, which pairs delightfully with citrus. Since I missed making cardamom sugar cookies over the holidays, I made a basic tart crust and added 1/2 t. of ground cardamom. I used the juice from the blood oranges to make a blood orange curd to spread on the crust, and then decorated the tart with candied oranges. Adding more cardamom powder to the whipped cream really complemented the flavor of the tart, and helped to cut the sweetness. My local recipe testers approved – and I know that this dessert will help many of us prevent scurvy at least once a year.