Category: Another Fabulous Fruit
Red Dragons in the Market
Pitaya season is here They are sweet, spiny and flaming red, rushing into your local markets by the dozens. Red dragons—in fruit form—are in season. Pitaya (dragon fruit) is common throughout Mexico and Central and South America, but is more popular in consumption in Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and China). The fruit looks like a [...]
Mangostino, Anyone?
Strange and Delicious Fruits of June Regardless of location, farmers’ markets throughout Guatemala provide a grand opportunity to experience new flavors, textures and colors in fruits foreign to the extranjero tongue. If you’re worried about consuming raw fruits here in Guatemala, remember that a couple minutes soaked in low strength bleach water will kill anything [...]
Another Fabulous Fruit: Lichi
Also known as the lichee or litchi, this spiny red fruit originated in China, where it has been grown for three and a half millennia. Amazingly, scientists have found specimens of the sturdy lichi tree that are more than 1,200 years old. In the last 20 years the fruit has caught on beyond Asia, and [...]
Another Fabulous Fruit: Carambola
For two decades the exotic carambola only appeared in the U.S. as a component of holiday fruit baskets. These days you’ll find them in all the better Stateside grocery stores. Also known as star fruit because of its shape when sliced crosswise, this oddity once grew only in Sri Lanka and the Moluccas. Perhaps a [...]
Another Fabulous Fruit: Anona
Known variously as the sugar apple, soursop and cherimoya, this fruit grows in so many regions and varieties that information on it is contradictory. Most sources say there about 2,000 species, all high in carbohydrates, potassium, phosphorous and calcium. The local variety contains a white, custard-like pulp and clusters of dark seeds. The flavor is [...]
Another Fabulous Fruit: Green Mango
Scholars believe Buddhist monks took mangoes on voyages from Asia to Persia in the Fourth and Fifth centuries B.C., and that the Persians subsequently took them to Africa in the 10th century. From there the Portuguese introduced them to Brazil during its 16th century colonization of the New World. And from Brazil the mango spread [...]
Another Fabulous Fruit: Nispero
Known in other countries by the names sapodilla and naseberry, these little orange fruits come from a tree that is a distant member of the rosebush family. In China, Japan and India, níspero trees were used ornamentally as well as for the fruit. For millennia only Asia knew of the níspero, but in the 1800s [...]
