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No Forbidden Fruits
Who needs a serpent? In today's Garden of Eden, exotic fruits are yours for the picking. By Nancy Ross Ryan
Fruits shown clockwise from upper left: Asian Pear, Papaya, Ugli Fruit, Kumquat, Mango, Blood Orange, Meyer Lemon |
 Photo by David Slivinski
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Pity the poor serpent if that legendary reptile were trying to ply its trade in the produce section of today's supermarkets. (You will recall that temptation was his game, and he tempted Eve to tempt Adam to eat the apple that got them both evicted from the Garden of Eden.) In today's produce Eden, even the apples come in exotic varieties that are lusciously tempting, and nothing is forbidden. However, some of the prices for imported, out-of-season exotica can make you think twice about taking that first bite. But before balking and walking away from some luscious edible with a higher-than-usual pricetag attached, take a look at your own shopping list. Do all the fruit-kingdom items on the list come under "Apples, bananas, grapes, oranges and pears?" Not that there is anything wrong with those fruits. But if they are all that's on the list, then you are in a same-old-fruit rut. Thanks to overnight air freight, produce bins today are stocked with dozens of varieties of delicious fruit guaranteed to add adventure to eating and entertaining. And in case you are unsure about how these exotic fruits taste and how best to use them, refer to our handy Fruit File, a guide to our favorite exotic fruits, appearing regularly at your local market. Asian Pear: (Also known as Nashi, apple pear, sand pear, salad pear, Chinese pear, Oriental pear and pear apple). Usually round in shape and ranging in color from light green to russet brown, Asian Pears can be smooth-skinned or have a slightly rough, sandy texture. They can be as small as the smallest pear or as big as the biggest apple. But oh! the crunch. These beauties are crisper than the crispest apple, and juicier than the juiciest pear. Their flavor is mildly sweet with low acidity. The seeds and core are small, so most of the fruit is edible. The growing season is late summer through early winter, and although some varieties may be imported, most are grown in the United States. Look for:firm, unblemished, unbruised fruit that is quite hard, even when ripe. A nice fragrance is a sign of nice flavor, so give them a sniff. They can be stored, refrigerated, and keep even longer than apples. How to use:Eat them as they are. You can use them raw, thinly sliced on cheese trays or on a fruit crudité platter. Dice them for added crunch to fresh green salads or make a wonderful Waldorf Salad from your favorite recipe, substituting Asian Pears for apples. You can also cook them, which intensifies the flavor. Poach them like pears in wine, or bake them. They take longer to cook than regular Bartlett or Anjou Pears and they remain firm even when cooked. Blood Orange: (Also known as pigmented orange). From the outside these look like small-to-medium oranges with smooth or textured skin. But inside, the fruit can be ruby, russet or purple, either a solid color or flecked. At their best the flavor is orange to the nth power, rich and sweet. The season is from December to as late as June. They may be imported from the Mediterranean, but most are grown in California. Look for:oranges that are heavy for their size, having no soft spots or blemishes. Refrigerate as you would ordinary oranges. How to use:Peel and eat for a real treat. Or slice into rounds and half moons. Use sections in green salads (Romaine lettuce, thinly slice red onion, blood orange segments and a honey-mustard dressing), and also in fruit salads. Freshly squeezed blood orange juice is a breakfast luxury, and do try a mimosa (Champagne and orange juice) with blood orange juice. If you have an ice cream maker, substitute blood oranges for regular in your favorite orange sorbet recipe. Cape Gooseberry: (Also known as Physalis, ground cherry, husk tomato, strawberry totmato, golden berry, golden husk and poha). A paper-thin, light brown parchment husk covers a round, yellow, cherry-tomato-sized fruit. The skin and yellow fleshed fruit are both edible, as are its tiny seeds. The flavor is sweetly acid, a cross between strawberry-tomato-grape -- unusual and delicious. The season for imported cape gooseberries, mostly from New Zealand, is March to June. A small amount of domestic gooseberries is availble during the summer. Look for:yellow to orange berries. Greenish color means they're not ripe. The husk can be clean and shiny or even wrinkled. Store them in the refrigerator in a single layer on a plate, uncovered and unhusked. Will keep for up to 4 weeks. How to use:Open husk,discard, rinse fruit and eat. Or remove husks, wash and chill and serve several in a crystal compote in place of sorbet as a palate refresher. Huskless cape gooseberries are great additions to crudité platters. For dessert, dip tips as you would strawberries into melted bitter sweet chocolate and chill. Chop gooseberries and add to muffin batter. Carambola: (Also known as star fruit, five-angled fruit or Chinese star fruit.) This fruit indeed does have five deep ridges in its oval yellow (when ripe) smooth skin that makes it look just like a star when sliced crosswise. It is completely edible without peeling or seeding. Too good to be true? Well, yes. There are sweet and tart varieties of carambola and only the sweet is good for eating out of hand. The tart carambola are great in cooking. Rule of thumb: Sweet carambola are usually white or yellow with thick ribs. The carambola with thin ribs tend to be tart. But when in doubt, ask the produce manager. Store at room temperature for immediate use; otherwise store in the refrigerator in a single layer for up to two weeks. The season is fall and winter. Look for:fruit that is 2 to 5 inches long with smooth, unblemished skin. Yellow or white color means ripeness. If the fruit is green you can ripen it at home. How to use:Rinse and eat sweet carambola, out of hand, or slice crosswise and use stars to garnish ice cream, iced tea, mineral water and fruit salad. Slice sweet carambola into green salads and toss. Sliced carambola are wonderful sauteed with shrimp. Kumquat: (Also known as fortunella). Looking like a tiny orange, either round or oblong, the kumquat is about 1-1/2 inches long and has a sweet rind and very pungent citrusy fruit that you either like or dislike. Store at room temperature for immediate use, or refrigerate fot up to two weeks. They are most plentiful in mid winter. Look for:bright unbruised fruit that is not discolored. How to Use:Eat rinsed kumquats whole, discarding seeds as you would when eating grapes. Add to fruit bowls for a brilliant accent. Blanch, quarter and seed and add to green salads. Substitute kumquats wherever you would use oranges in cooking. They are especially nice when blanched, sliced, seeded and added to muffin batter and stuffings for poultry. Mango: Domestic (Florida) mangos are available in summer, but imported mangos (primarily from Haiti, Mexico, and perhaps from South and Central America or even Asia) are available January through September. And there are several varieties of mangos, ranging in shape from round to oval and in size from less than a pound to three pounds. When ripe the skin ranges from yellow to orange to red. There are, however, good and not-so-good mangos. When they are good they are very, very good and worth seeking. Look for:mangos that are full and firm with no bruising or wrinkling of the skin. Color -- yellow, orange or red -- means the fruit is ripe or has begun to ripen. The best clue to flavor is aroma. Smell the stem end for a pleasant, perfumed scent. A sour or alcoholic smell means the fruit has begun to ferment. You can ripen green mangos at home at room temperature. Store ripened mangos in the refrigerator for only two to three days. How to use:Good mangos are so luscious that it's almost a shame to do anything more than slice and eat them. But in cooking , mangos make delicious ice cream, sorbet, tarts, and they can be pureed for dessert sauces. Peeling and slicing a mango can be daunting, so here's a simple method. First, stand the mango with its stem up, and slice vertically on one side with a sharp knife down along the big, flat stone that is in the center of every mango. Repeat on the other side. Then slice the flesh away from the seed -- which you can now see -- on the two remaining sides of the fruit. Peel the skin away from the fruit pieces and either dice or slice. Meyer Lemon: The lemons we usually get in the markets are either the Eureka or Lisbon varieties -- nice, sour lemons. But from December through April in the Bay Area of California (around San Francisco) there grows a truly remarkable lemon called Meyer. The Meyer lemon is sweeter than other lemons, thinner-skinned, juicier, more fragrant and utterly different in flavor. They're like -- well, Meyer Lemons. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley generally gets credit for popularizing these remarkable fruits. Bay area markets have them and chefs across the country feature them on their menus in season, so sources outside of California do exist. Ask your produce manager and maybe you, too, can experience the Meyer lemon. Look for:Thin skinned, fragrant lemons without bruising. Store at room temperature for immediate use; refrigerate for two weeks. How to use:Good work if you can get them. Use them in any way you would use regular lemons, but in cooking use them toward the end of cooking because the flavor is quite delicate. Meyer lemons make wonderful vinaigrettes. Papaya: (Also known as Papaw, Pawpaw, Lechosa, Fruta Bomba). Papayas may range in color from green to salmon or yellow, with smooth skins and weigh as little as half a pound and as much as 20 pounds. The most common shapes are round and pear. The flesh is sweet and delicate when ripe and the blackish seeds are edible. Although papayas are grown in Hawaii and Florida, unless you live there, most of them have to be picked green for shipping. But they do ripen at room temperature. (Those lucky ones who have tasted tree-ripened papayas claim the picked-green fruit does not compare in flavor.) Papayas are available year round and abundant in spring and fall. Look for:Small fruit that is already turning yellow, gives slightly to the touch and is not bruised. A spotted skin is perfectly alright. Ripen papaya at room temperature; refrigerate when ripe. How to use:Wash, peel and halve, eat with a spoon. Also good sliced or diced. Papaya makes a beautiful addition to fruit salads. Sliced papaya goes well with thinly sliced ham or prosciutto, smoked turkey and cold boiled shrimp. Papaya may also be used in cooking wherever fruit is used. Passion Fruit: (Also known as purple or yellow passion fruit, maracuja, purple granadilla). Indigenous to Brazil, passion fruit is now grown around the world, including (in small quantities) in Florida and California. The size and shape of an egg, passion fruit is purplish brown outside and the yellow inside is composed of tiny "bulbs" of pulp, each of which contains a seed. The aroma and flavor combined are heady, a combination of jasmine, lemon, honey. The season is from spring through summer. Look for:fruit that is heavy for its size with unbroken skin that is wrinkled in places -- a sign of ripeness. Refrigerate ripe passion fruit for up to one week. You may also freeze them in plastic bags for a month or two. When ready to use, halve and scoop out pulp. Another method is to puree the pulp with a little sugar, freeze it in ice cube trays and, when frozen, put the passion fruit cubes into a plastic bag in the freezer. How to use:Passion fruit is still very expensive, so it is better used as a lightly sweetened puree. Scoop the pulp into a fine-mesh stainless steel (not aluminum) sieve and press with a spoon, forcing the pulp through and leaving the seeds behind. Use it to sauce desserts such as ice cream, puddings, and cakes. It also makes divine sorbets, ice creams and mousses. And passion fruit puree is unmatched in tropical mixed drinks. Persimmon: (Also known as kaki).Native to China, the beautiful orange persimmon is grown primarily in Japan and also in France, Italy, Spain, North Africa, Chile and in California. The majority of domestic persimmon are a variety called Hachiya. When green the fruit is astringent and mouth-puckering, but when ripe the fruit is sweet and soft as jam. The season is fall through winter. Try to buy soft, ripe orange persimmons, handle with care and use quickly. (Ironically, the small native American persimmon is rarely cultivated these days and very hard to find; however, most American recipes for persimmons were meant for that small, flavorful fruit loved by the Algonquins who named it pessemin.) Look for:Bright orange, soft-to-the-touch, fragrant fruit. How to use:Cooking with the delicate Hachiya persimmon is not recommended, because its lovely flavor is lost. Wash and peel it for slicing and eating as is, or dicing for fruit salads. Puree it as a dessert sauce. Plaintain: (Also known as platano, platano macho, cooking banana). Aptly named cooking banana, this fruit cannot be eaten out of hand, and is not as sweet as the bananas with which we are most familiar. However, in Latin America, the plantain is used as a starch, and can be cooked at any stage of ripeness, when the peel ranges in succession from green to yellow to black. Plantain is a great alternative to potatoees. When green the flavor is bland and the flesh is starchy. As the plantain grows riper, the sweetness and aroma increases, but it remains firm when cooked. It is available year round but may not be available in all markets. Store plaintains at room temperature. Look for:Plantains that are green, yellow or black and that become slightly softer as they ripen. How to use:Plantains are not as easy to peel as bananas unless they are black ripe. To peel green or yellow plantains, rinse the fruit and trim both ends. Cut fruit crosswise in short sections. Stand section on end. Cut off peel using its natural ridges as guides. Then you may slice it for boiling or baking (as potatoes), or sauteing in oil or butter with brown sugar added for dessert. You may also make a slit in a plantain and simply bake it. Pummelo: (Also known as Shaddock, Chinese Grapefruit). Once in awhile during January and February you will see what looks like a giant grapefruit in the produce section. If you frequent Oriental markets you are more likely to find this pummelo, a citrus with an enormously thick peel and pith and a pink or yellow segmented fruit within. The pummelo is native to Malaysia and Indochina, cultivated in China and Japan and is just beginning to be cultivated in this country. Unlike grapefruit, pummelos are not bitter. But like grapefruits they can range from almost seedless to very seedy, from juicy to dry, from sweet to sour. It's the luck of the draw. But if you draw a good pummelo, your tastebuds will be rewarded. Look for:Pummelos that are heavy, plump and fragrant. Store refrigerated. How to use:Remove all the pith and membrane, and lightly sugar the sections. Or else marinate the sections in a sweet vinaigrette and add them to a salad. Quince: Decades ago the quince -- which looks like a knobby yellow or rusk-colored pear -- was found in kichens all over America where our grandmothers cooked it into delicious preserves, jellies, candies and pies. It grows all over the world, has a perfectly lovely flavor and aroma, but cannot be eaten raw. But because it is so easy to cook it is well worth looking for in season -- late summer and fall. Look for:quince that are unbruised and unblemished. Store at room temperature until ripe; when the flesh is ivory the quince is ripe. Store ripe quince in the refrigerator. How to use:Peel and core the fruit, being careful not to damage your fingers as you separate the extra-hard core from the flesh. Poach, stew, braise or bake with sugar. Serve poached quince for breakfast; puree stewed quince like applesauce; serve braised and baked quince with meats and poultry. Or, do as our grandmothers did, and cook it with enough sugar to make a lovely jam for toast. Ugli Fruit: (a trademarked name). This juicy, zesty citrus fruit really is a beautiful swan. The skin is loose, ranges from light green to light orange and may be mottled, but inside the flesh is intensely citrusy and sweet . No one is quite sure of its parents either. It is native to Jamaica and may be a cross between a grapefruit and -- take your pick -- a bitter orange, a tangerine or a mandarin orange. You can find it from January to June. Look for:Fruit that is heavy and dense for its size. Store it in the refrigerator. How to use:Use any way you would use oranges or grapefruit; it is delicious eaten raw. Add it to green or fruit salads but remember to do so at the last minute because its extra juicyness will dilute dressings. |
GOURMET ISSUE - June 1999