Adventures in shopping - rambutan in Lincolnland

A short time ago, the first jackfruit showed up in our markets, now rambutan has made an appearance (Nephelium lappaceum) Sapindaceae, soap berry family. Lychee is a similar, and more familiar species, a fruit making sporadic appearances in our markets.  These are a little worse for wear, but not so dried out as to be ignored.  Actually they were quite juicy, tasty, and give a reasonable idea of the nature of these SE Asian native fruits.  TPP first tried these in Singapore actually.  Now they are being grown in Guatamala, so they will become more familiar. They look spiny, but the "spines" are soft.  While TPP has experimented with many fruits, you may be intimidated with unknown fruits, but they are pretty easy to eat using you teeth or thumb nail, break into the leathery skin near one end and pull this cap off. The rest of the skin peels off easily. There is a single pit and a translucent semi firm flesh (an aril actually) with a texture similar to a seedless grape is revealed. They have a sweet, and dare it be said, "fruity" flavor, rather mild and nondescript, but basically likable. Another close relative that TPP has only seen in Thailand is the Longan, smaller and with a tan-brown leathery skin.  The Chinese described it as having a "hot" quality, which TPP took to be spicy (uh, no).  They tasted like lychee or rambutan, but with a stronger after taste, however after eating 7 or 8, some 10 mins later the hot quality arrived via a sweating, a flushed face, and a more rapid heartbeat. That is a toxic reaction! Hot indeed!

Fruit Diversity

One of my students' favorite economic botany labs deals with fruit diversity. Probably at no time previous have so many different fruits been available in ordinary temperate zone markets. Although the Phactor managed to find quite a few interesting fruits, there were several disappointments. Tamarillos, which had been around for several weeks, disappeared. Drat! The pitiful excuses for pineapples were picked way too green as were the custard apples. However the mangoes and orange papayas were in great shape. Kiwanos and passion fruits were the most unusual from the student perspective, both having fleshy seed coats as their edible part. This year's surprise favorite was carambola. And big surprise, most of them tried most of the fruits without being cajoled to do so! Sometimes peer pressure can be a positive thing. After so many years of prowling tropical markets around the world new fruits are a rare event for the Phactor. Oh, yes, tried all of these. Out of this group the mangosteens are my favorite.

Know your tropical fruit

Last night a chance encounter with the Food network program Unwrapped caught my interest because it was featuring passion fruit rose petal ice cream from Out of a Flower in Dallas TX. Anything with passion fruit in it is better than things without, a belief the Phactors came to have while living in the tropics where we rented a passion fruit vine that came with the apartment option. Well, let's just watch this a bit and see the goodness. So the fellow explains, "We start with fresh fruit." And the video shifts to hands peeling, wait for it, mangos. Then they show the mango being pureed and the rest of the whole thing, and not once, not for one second, did they show or work with a passion fruit. Now quite likely the mango rose petal ice cream is great, but passion fruit it ain't unless someone at the food network screwed the pooch and inserted the wrong footage. In a few weeks a trip will take us for far northern Queensland and about 70 km north of Townsville sits the Frosty Mango, the purveyor of some of the world's best tropical fruit ice creams, yes, including passion fruit, although people in the know say the black sapote ice cream is just magic.

Plant ID - UTF my speciality

The internet has brought a whole new dimension to us plant identifiers. In the old days people with plastic bags of plant parts or telephone calls ("it's got green leaves and red berries; what is it?") all got routed to the Phactor, but they hadn't travelled very far. Now specimens come from all over the world and from lots of strange places, and while this botanist has gotten around pretty well, it's still only a couple of dozen countries. So an old buddy sends along an image and asks what he's taken a picture of in Dominica, an island the Phactor has never visited. Ah, but this one was easy because it's part of the UTF - ubiquitious tropical flora, a group of plants that's been moved around so much most people have no idea where the plant is really from or what it's really called. In some tropical places, people may never even see a native plant. Many members of the UTF pick up new common names in their new locations. The picture is pretty good, although it looked better in the horizontal, but blogger rotated it for me (?), and several obvious features should narrow things down for you right away. Note the big, glossy, opposite leaves and the white flowers with 5 corolla lobes flaring from a narrow tube. You should have thought that's in the Rubiaceae right away. Now the fruit is a bit unusual for this family, but very distinctive for this plant, which is often called noni, or Indian mulberry, or cheese fruit among others. Morinda citrifolia naturalizes near beach areas now in lots of countries although it's a native of SE Asia. As one of the common names suggests, the fruit is not to everyone's liking; think limburger cheese. Since the fruit is composed from many flowers, this is a multiple fruit, like pineapple. The Phactor scores again!

Longing for the tropics - Mangoes

Here in the heartland of North America, mangoes remain a little known, novelty item, and truly, like many other exotic things, e.g., seafood, tropical fruits are best when consumed and enjoyed in the shade of the tree from which they were picked. Having traveled around the tropics a great deal, and having a professional interest in economically important plants, the Phactor has tried quite a long life list of tropical fruits. So speaking from considerable experience, the mango is one of the world's best fruits, succulent, juicy, and when just right, with a wonderful sweet-tart rich mango flavor. So naturally my interest was keen when "Ataulfo" mangoes showed up in a local market. It should not surprise you to encounter a variety of mango with which you are unfamiliar because, as the poster shows, there are hunderds of varieties and the only place in North America where you can get more than a handful is Fairchild Tropical Garden. Mangoes shipped to distant regions can be pretty good because they after ripen reasonably well. The flesh should just barely yield under the skin when at their prime, just like a peach, just slightly under ripe. The Ataulfos were just right, and at $6 a dozen, a bargain to boot. These were quite simply the best mango the Phactor has consumed outside of the tropics. The sweet-tart taste was superb, and this variety has a pleasantly firm, almost fiberless golden flesh, and a small flat pit. Wow! In terms of shape, size, and taste, this variety reminded me of the "Nam Doc Mai" mango of Thailand, and of course mangoes are of SE Asian origin so they have been cultivated there for thousands of years, so New World varieties all will have Asian ancestors. Unfortunately, mangoes go through their prime quickly, and an over ripe mango loses the tartness counterpoint, so 6 of my mangoes were transformed into mango sorbet. A double wow summer treat!