We visited Sicily and met Danilo from AranceBio<\/strong> in a field where the blood orange harvest was at its peak. You can not only see the ripe oranges hanging on the trees, but you can also smell them. The sky is blue, the trees and the meadow are green, and the oranges hang like small lanterns in the trees. It’s sunny but very fresh \u2013 even in Sicily, it’s winter. <\/p>\n This is exactly the right time for the oranges to ripen. You need a mix of warm days and chilly nights for anthocyanin to develop; the pigment that turns the pulp red. So, if the nights stay too warm, the pigment can\u2019t form, and your blood orange might end up looking more orange than red – though just as tasty. <\/p>\n Danilo grows two different varieties; Moro<\/em>: which is a bit more acidic and has a deep red flesh (if it’s cold enough!) and Tarocco<\/em>, which is a bit sweeter and very mild. It\u2019s a bit like being a kid opening a Kinder Egg. You can\u2019t tell from the outside whether the fruit is going to be red or just orange. <\/p>\n Given increasing dry periods, Danilo relies on permanent ground cover. This natural carpet protects the soil and serves as a water reservoir, storing valuable water during dry spells \u2013 thus keeping nature resilient. <\/p>\n We obviously had to ask what we should eat while in Sicily, and Danilo recommended two dishes: the traditional Pasta con le Sarde (what else?!) and those deep-fried rice balls known as Arancini.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why every blood orange isn\u2019t actually blood-red We visited Sicily and met Danilo from AranceBio in a field where the blood orange harvest was at its peak. You can not only see the ripe oranges hanging on the trees, but you can also smell them. The sky is blue, the trees and the meadow are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":57650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-field-notes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n