Sicilian Blood Orange

Arancia Rossa di Sicilia has been a protected IGP since 1996, and it covers three cultivars of sweet orange grown in a defined stretch of eastern Sicily.

Tarocco is the most planted and the most sold. The flesh is orange shot through with red veins and blotches, the skin is thin and peels by hand, there are few or no seeds, and it is very sweet with balanced acidity. It is the eating orange of the three, and it carries the highest vitamin C content of any commercially grown orange. Dozens of selected clones exist (Gallo, Nucellare, Ippolito, Meli, Sant'Alfio) and the Sant'Alfio is recognisable by the small collar or neck at the stem end.

Moro is the dark one. The flesh runs from wine red to a purple so deep it reads as black, and the skin often blushes red too. The flavour is genuinely different from other oranges: blackberry and raspberry notes, and a faintly bitter finish. It ripens first and gives the most dramatic juice.

Sanguinello, Spanish in origin but grown in Sicily for over a century, ripens last. Thin smooth skin, orange flesh streaked with red, very few seeds, extremely juicy. It hangs on the tree into May without losing quality and closes the season.

The pigment in all three is anthocyanin, chiefly cyanidin-3-glucoside, the same class of compound that colours blueberries and red cabbage. It is not a dye and not a hybrid with another fruit: the tree makes it in response to cold-night stress.

Tarocco tastes like an unusually good orange: sweet, low on bitterness, with the acidity to keep it from being cloying and a faint raspberry note underneath.

Moro is the one that surprises people. It is markedly less sweet, with a berry character (blackberry, black raspberry, a hint of red wine) and a bitter edge in the finish that some love and some do not. Its juice is opaque and dark enough to look like something other than orange juice.

Sanguinello sits between them: juicy, straightforwardly sweet, mildly berried.

All three have more aromatic complexity than a Valencia or a navel, and the aroma fades fast once juiced: squeezed blood orange juice is a different drink after twenty minutes.

Juice first, and drink it quickly: a kilo of fruit gives about half a litre, and the aroma degrades within fifteen or twenty minutes of squeezing. Do not strain it; the pulp in suspension is where much of the flavour sits.

Then the Sicilian orange salad, which is the dish that converts sceptics. Peel the oranges to the flesh, slice them across, and dress with thinly shaved raw fennel, black olives, red onion, olive oil, salt and plenty of black pepper. The older versions add salted anchovies, smoked herring or salt cod; the most stripped-back version is oranges, oil and pepper and nothing else.

Granita is the Catania answer: juice, sugar, water, churned or scraped, eaten with a brioche col tuppo, at breakfast, without apology.

In baking, Tarocco peel candies well and makes a marmalade of an unmistakable ruby-brown colour. Moro pairs unusually well with dark chocolate, on the strength of that berry note.

Savoury uses: segments with fennel and prawns, agrodolce sauces for duck or pork, slices roasted under a whole fish, risotto finished with the juice. One rule worth knowing: anthocyanins turn brownish-purple with prolonged heat, so add the juice at the end if you want to keep the colour.

Whole fruit sits on the counter for five to seven days and holds two to three weeks in the fridge drawer at 5 to 8 C, loose or in a perforated bag so condensation can escape. What changes is water: the skin dulls, softens and goes puffy where it lifts from the flesh, the fruit gets lighter in the hand, and the juice inside runs thinner and flatter. Very cold storage brings its own mark, a fine pitting on the peel that citrus develops below about 3 C. Netted bags carry a packing date from the shipper.

The red pigment is the fragile part. Anthocyanins fade with light, heat and time, so juice turns from crimson toward brown-orange within hours in a jug and faster in a warm pan; squeeze it into the glass rather than ahead of service. Juice frozen in cubes at minus 18 C holds its colour for several months. A cut half goes back in the fridge with the face covered, where it dries and the colour on the surface dulls within a couple of days. Zest freezes well.

Look for Arancia Rossa di Sicilia IGP on the net or the sticker, with one of three variety names beside it: Tarocco, Moro or Sanguinello. The outside is a poor guide, and this catches people out. Tarocco often looks like an ordinary orange with only a faint rust blush yet cuts open streaked deep red; Moro is the one stained purple inside and out; Sanguinello sits between them. Colour builds from cold nights on the slopes of Etna, so fruit early in the December to May season is paler inside than fruit picked in February, and that is seasonal, not a fault. Pick up a heavy fruit with thin, tight skin.

Cara Cara, sold in American and British supermarkets as a pink or red navel, is the usual substitute: its flesh is an even salmon pink, never burgundy, and it is sweeter and much less acid. Blood oranges grown in California or Spain are the same varieties from other ground, without the IGP mark. Expect to pay several times the price of ordinary juicing oranges.

In the US the season runs December to March and most of what you will see is Californian Moro, sold at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and farmers' markets at roughly 2 to 4 dollars a pound. Genuine Sicilian IGP fruit reaches Italian grocers and importers such as Eataly in small quantities at more like 5 to 9 dollars a pound. Seek out Tarocco specifically: it is the variety that travels least and tastes most.

In the UK, Sicilian blood oranges are a January-to-March fixture at Waitrose, Ocado, Natoora and Italian delicatessens, generally at 4 to 6 pounds a kilo against 2.50 to 4 for Spanish fruit. Buying direct from Sicilian growers by the ten- or fifteen-kilo crate works out around 2.50 to 3.50 euros a kilo delivered.

What to check: the EU IGP mark and the variety on the label or net; fruit that feels heavy for its size; firm skin sitting tight against the flesh. Do not judge by the outside: Moro colours its skin, Tarocco often does not, and a completely orange-skinned Tarocco can be brilliantly red inside.

Paternò, Biancavilla and Adrano, on the southwestern flank of Etna, where the groves run up to the edge of the towns and many farms sell at the gate between January and March.

Francofonte and Lentini, in the province of Siracusa, are the historic Tarocco district and the base of most of the growers who ship nationally. Several run visits during the season.

Catania is the easiest stop: the Pescheria market and the stalls around piazza Carlo Alberto are full of blood oranges from December to April, with juice squeezed in front of you, and the city's bars serve blood orange granita with a brioche at breakfast.

Centuripe, in the province of Enna, is worth the detour for the view, since the town sits along a ridge above the groves of the Dittaino valley.

Go between January and March. All three varieties overlap, and the Moro is at its darkest.