Tamarillo

Well... just please have a look before i begin to try and describe!!

 The skin is thin, and soft like a tomato...
but when you cut it open it looks like this!

 yummmmmmmmm.... sort of...

well.. I don't like seeds in my fruit.. I think this point was covered in my Grenadilla post! When food is this much work without huge reward (ie - artichoke hearts) I find little reason to keep eating it..

So I suppose you want to know what it tastes like..





Well... Fleshy.. like a tomato.... with that weird texture I usually don't mind... but this might have been a touch bruised or overripe..

And sort of sweet at the same time.... But for the seeds...






Perhaps I should stick to non-seedy fruits!

I really don't know how to explain... this is a sweet but slightly sour tomato with a lot of juice and tiny hard black seeds in it...

If i had the time or energy I might make ketchup out of it.... I shall keep my eyes peeled!!! 

I hope you try this one... it is probably the most difficult to describe I have eaten so far!

Cotton Candy Really Does Grow on Trees...

Today I tried jackfruit! The largest tree-bourne fruit in the world!

it has an incredible sweet taste without being sugary, and a crazy texture, but let me start from the beginning..

I bought it at the market in a small chunk, because a whole jackfruit is massive, and incredibly expensive per pound. it's got giant nobby bumps on it.

The fruit is not hard although it appears that way, even the rind under the skin is sort of soft and stringy.

When unripe, it can be cooked in desserts or curried dishes, but when ripe it's delicious alone. There are also lobes in this fruit, with a soft stringy rind in between them.

Jackfruit was delicious! it tasted like a very ripe banana without the pasty dairy-ish banana aftertaste i dislike, with a dash of cotton candy in the mix! Sort of juicy, but still a pretty solid fruit.

It was really sweet, and my dishes and hands smell so good! Mmmm, I want to go somewhere hot on a beach and eat this all day long :) Hurray for successful food adventures!

Mangosteeeen!

So there is this crazy looking little fruit. It looks like something from Dora the Explorer, right? All round and purple and with cute round leaves? ... I digress..

There are "cloves" inside the mangosteen that come out individually.  You cut around the thick firm shell and inside is the fruit. The number of petals on the bottom of the fruit corresponds with the number of cloves on the inside, magical!

Each clove has a large flat seed in it. They reminded me of a persimmon seed, and had sort of a clear jelly substance around them...

The fruit itself was a light and foamy texture, with a mild almost citrusy taste. A google search would tell me that this is a superfruit, but i would prefer to eat a summer peach any day of the week.


Tasty and fun!

you had me at "Product of Colombia"...

As many of you know, I have an affinity for the heritage of my dear friend Sara.

Her family has taught me how to make guacamole, toast arrepas (traditional flatbreads) and how to drink straight aguardiente (this is a traditional Colombian liquor that is hybrid of sambuca and tequila, it is not sold on Canada, and roughly translates to "firewater" in English) at an age I perhaps best not reveal...

So while perusing the grocery isles this evening as I picked up some lunch meat, i saw this little guy and thought, SOLD!

So the Sweet Grenadilla is a relative of the passion fruit (which I HAVE tried). It is larger, orange, and can be identified by it's hollow sound and bright orange color.

Tropical, Colombian, and includes the adjective "Sweet" in the title.
So far so good...

 

When you manage to tear this guy open (the knife wasn't much use) it is essentially a large passionfruit inside with bigger, flat seeds. You need to go easy, because it takes some serious patience to get the slimy fruit off the seeds. The best part was the juice, and I must say this fruit is not for anybody in a rush.

Overall, not something I would buy unless I was making something fancy, and was going to squeeze the juice out with a cheesecloth for a nice sauce. Tastes great, smells amazing, and looks even better.

...From the outside anyways...

on the menu are also some apple turnovers, and a loaf of homemade bread for yours truly. Soon I'm going to need some stretchier pants..