Secret Ingredient: Kumquats

The first time I had a kumquat I wasn’t sure what to do with it — I tried peeling it like a tiny orange. It was only later that I found out that you eat the whole thing. In fact, the peel is the sweet part of the fruit; the inner flesh is incredibly tart. When my sister was at school in Arizona there were kumquat trees on campus, and I helped myself to a handful of them. Since then I grab kumquats whenever they make an appearance at my local market. I usually eat them as-is, but a couple of years ago I cooked them down to a glaze for a sweet ricotta pie.