Skylake Ranch's 'Wonderful' Pomegranates

At first glance, the Skylake Ranch booth at the Sunday looks straight out of Knott’s Berry Farm. But the array of dark-colored bottles aren’t full of jams and preserves, they are filled with sauces and syrups made from California-grown pomegranates. 

Skylake Ranch is located in Durham, CA where this family-owned orchard is planted with over 20 acres of Wonderful pomegranates.  There are other types of pomegranates, but the "Wonderful" is the most popular commercial variety available from October through January. 

I spoke with Skylake's Erin, who was extolling the virtues of Skylake Ranch and the products fanned out on the table in front of me. She started by telling me that they had already sold all their most popular product-- pomegranate juice.  It’s hand-pressed with nothing added to it. Each glass bottle sells for $5. Erin usually keeps the bottles on ice for customers to enjoy on warm days, but you have to get the market early because they sell out quickly. 

The juice wasn't the only sold out item. The Pomegranate Fruit Spread was also gone. Erin said it technically isn’t a jelly because there is not enough sugar in it, but the spread contains 60 precent juice, has only 9 grams of sugar and, it should be noted, more than half of those sugar grams come from the fruit itself.

Next, Erin showed me Skylake Ranch’s cooking products. The Pomegranate Balsamic Grill Sauce is perfect for weekend BBQs or drizzled over grilled vegetables.  The Skylake Ranch website also suggests mixing a few tablespoons of stone ground mustard with a half-cup of Grill Sauce for a savory dip.

The Salad Dressing Marinade can be used, as the name would indicate, as a salad dressing or a marinade for fish, chicken, steak or tofu. Erin said that the trick to marinating tofu (which she said is great) is to press the tofu between heavy plates to extract the water before marinating it in the pomegranate dressing.

Skylake Ranch also has pomegranate syrup, which can be drizzled over desserts such as ice cream, yogurt or cheesecake.  The simple main ingredients (pomegranates, lemon juice and sugar) lend themselves well to sweet treats or tangy savory dishes. 

This syrup would be perfect for a terrific Autumn Farmers’ Market Salad recipe I got from a Sur La Table cooking class I took years ago.  The recipe has the unexpected tartness of pomegranate molasses.  Since pomegranate molasses can be hard to find, make your own molasses from Skylake’s very popular pomegranate juice.  Along with a plethora of other recipes, the Skylake Ranch website has instructions for making molasses by  “reducing 2 bottles of Skylake Ranch pomegranate juice over a simmering heat for 50 to 70 minutes, or until it its reduces by 2/3.” 

It may take awhile, but the result is a flavor explosion that is completely worth the effort.

Christy Wilhelmi is well known to many local Mar Vistans as The Gardenerd. Her website and blog at  www.gardenerd.com offers  information on classes, consulting and food-garden design.