Tropical Fruit Salad

Bananas (guineo), oranges (naranja), lemons (limón), and watermelon (sandía) are common everyday fruits in the US; they are available year round in most supermarkets and, with the exception of bananas, are all grown in North America. There are a number of tropical fruits that are everyday fruits here in Ecuador that you will likely recognize as more exotic; these include pineapple (piña), mangoes (mango), passion fruit (maracuyá), and papaya (papaya)* to name a few. Our family has found the pineapples to be particularly scrumptious the last month; we've successfully managed to consume one pineapple per day. No problema.

For today's post, I wanted to write about tropical fruits that you've never heard of. . . Perhaps reading about them will make you want to come visit us!

Naranjilla: The naranjilla is a small spherical fruit, about the size of a plum, with a thin bright orange peel. The flesh has a tomato-like texture (gelatinous pulp surrounding small edible seeds). The fruit is too sour to eat directly, but it is delicious in juice blended with sugar and water/milk. The naranjilla plant grows sparsely in La Josefina and is surprisingly spiky with pretty reddish rimmed green leaves. I absolutely love jugo de naranjilla -- it's one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I made the juice for my kids one of our first mornings here, and they were not impressed. I tried making a slightly different version this week, and I got increased interest but no actual delight. Oh well, more juice for me (and Paul).

Guanabana (Soursop): Have you ever eaten a soursop? This is the very bizarre English name for the guanabana, which is anything but sour. It is a cousin to the chirimoya, in the custard apple family. Its super duper sweet white fleshy fruit is tucked into a big giant heavy green shell. The fruit is stowed in little compartments around big black seeds. I don't know why, but from the outside the guanabana looks like over-sized hand grenades to me. The green skin tends to be spiky, and the fruit, which is huge when fully grown, hangs up high in the trees. When ripe, they literally fall down (sometimes 15 or 20 feet); you pick up the cracked green skin off the ground and eat the pulpy flesh inside. It's super. Ecuadorians like guanabana mixed with milk to make juice.

Granadilla is very similar in shape and size to the maracuyá (passion fruit) but is a little redder and a little sweeter. The outer shell peel also doesn't get wrinkly the way maracuyá tends to. However, just like with passion fruit, you cut these in half and scoop out (with a spoon or your tongue) the sour gelatinous fruit that surrounds edible seeds. It has a really great sweet-tart flavor. Yum! This is another one that my kids weren't psyched about. Once again, more for me!

Guaba/Guava** are one of the most bizarre fruits I have ever seen or eaten. They look like over-sized green pea pods dangling high up from tall skinny trees. The pods can be as long as two, even three feet long, and the trees are packed with these pods close to harvest time. The guaba pods that grow in the Sierra are furry; the ones that grow around here are not. Inside are little compartments (just like inside pea pods) with white chewy fruit around flat brown seeds. Some are quite sweet, but most have only a hint of sweetness in their cotton-like texture. Ecuadorian kids LOVE them. I eat them mostly because a kind neighbor hands me one, and I don't want to make them feel bad. I consider myself neutral to guaba. I'll be curious to see what my kids think of them come guaba season.

Guayavas/Guavas literally fall from the trees around here like I remember olives falling from trees where I grew up. They are splattered all over the ground and don't look particularly appealing in that form. In their pure form, they are about the size of a small apple, have pale yellow skin and pink insides. They also have hard seeds and often harbor worms, which I recommend extracting prior to consumption. This is a fruit that is not particularly delicious, but is often made into sweets, treats, and jams. Consumed in those treats, it's pretty good.

Tomate del árbol (Tree Tomato): this one is a funny fruit because it has to be cooked to be eaten. It's an oval-shaped fruit, reddish-orange in color (I digress here to say that the word used most commonly to name the color orange in these parts is "tomate", that is, the color of the tomate del árbol, rather than naranja (the oranges around here are NOT really orange). You can make juice out of tomate del árbol, but they are most commonly used to make "ají" which is an Ecuadorian version of spicy salsa dribbled over any food of your choice. Dillon and I are craving ají (widely found in Ecuadorian restaurants), but interestingly I cannot find ají pepper (similar to a jalapeno pepper) locally. It's on my list for our next trip to La Mana.

Taxo (Prickly Pear): long banana-shaped fruit but smaller -- about three inches long -- and yellow when ripe. The flesh is a bright orange gelatinous substance surrounding many small black seeds. They are used in juice, but can also be eaten raw by cutting off the tip and sucking out the juice, seeds and pulp. Jonah is particularly interested in trying taxo; I haven't managed to get any yet.

Aracao: super sour yellow fleshy fruit with thin skin. I don't remember this fruit from living here twenty years ago. Another one that you cannot really eat straight up (though Dillon tried one day on the finca; it was crazy sour), best blended with milk and sugar. We suspect this fruit is related to the loquat.

Pitajayo (Dragon Fruit): This is a newer fruit for these parts, imported in the last decade or so from Asia. They were not available at all when I lived here twenty years ago, but now they are planted and harvested all over La Josefina. In fact, we have a yellow pitajayo plant in our backyard right now. The plant is still pretty young (and green), but we have been enjoying buying them and experimenting with this new-to-us fruit since. The pink variety are a little bigger and pulpier with smaller but more plentiful seeds. The yellow ones are sweeter. I put some in my strawberry nutella crepe the other morning, and it was delectable!

Lima: A big over-sized citrus variety, this pale yellow fruit with thick skin and a yellow/green inside seems to me to be some sort of cross between grapefruit and a lemon, but with a surprisingly neutral (i.e. lack of) taste. It is not really sour, as you might expect from the lemon and grapefruit families. It's quite refreshing when you are out and about on the finca and want something to wet your palate, but it's not really something I see people using to cook with or make juice. Dillon tried one his first week here and his assessment was "it has pretty much no taste, and it was kind of dry". My Ecuadorian family here loves them.

Cacao: There is surprisingly sweet fresh fruit that surrounds the chocolate seed on the cacao plant, which is widely harvested here to sell. The pods are long and almond-shaped, bright red when ripe (almost-black, when unripe), and deeply grooved. The outer shell requires a knife or machete to break open. Inside you find a line of seeds, surrounded by a cloudy white sweet fruit that you basically suck off the seed. Once you are done sucking, locals will ask you to keep the seed so that they can dry them in the sun and sell them to local chocolate makers.

*Random side note #1: I am of the opinion that there are two types of papaya people (much the same way there are two types of cilantro people): "those who love them" and "those who hate them". I am in the "hate them" category; papaya literally smells and tastes like vomit to me. Paul doesn't believe me, but I am not exaggerating. There are papaya trees in abundance here in our community, which is awesome for the papaya lovers, but not great for those of us who have to politely decline the gift of a papaya on a regular basis. Unfortunately, seems (without biasing them) that my kids are in the "those who hate them" category. Too bad for all of us.

**Random side note #2: For some reason, it's terribly endearing to me that the V and B are essentially interchangeable letters in Ecuadorian Spanish. They are indistinguishable to the ear and are often mistakenly and/or intentionally replace one another. For example, most people around here call me "Verito" (the diminutive for Vero, which is a shortened version of Veronica). But it is not uncommon for a note or sign to name me as "Berito". Same goes with Viviana/Bibiana, Bebida/Vevida, and Guava/Guaba.

***Random side note #3: We found a tree in our backyard with giant spiky fruits hanging off of it. No one here knows exactly what it is, but after some internet research, we are pretty sure it's a jack fruit tree. Paul is continuing his research to determine optimal harvesting technique, which involves tapping it for a hollow sound and slitting it open a day before harvest to allow the sticky latex to seep out. Wish us luck!

Pitajayo (dragon fruit) of the yellow variety

Sorry for the bad picture, but this is a screenshot of a video I took of Lucia opening a cacao fruit

Dragon fruit growing up a tree in our backyard

Dillon holding a pitajayo (dragon fruit) right before we ate it (Jonah photo bombing)

 

This is the mystery fruit we think may be Jack Fruit?

Young dragon fruit in our backyard, not ripe yet!