Len was in south Florida for a work conference, and while he did bring me a souvenir from a gift shop, he also brought souvenirs home from an even better spot -- a fruit stand.
You know you can find something new to try in your very own grocery store. Sometimes the stores even highlight a special fruit, in for a limited time. Pluots, star fruit, and dragon fruit come to mind. But while you haven't had to travel much of anywhere to find it, most of the fruit you might consider as ordinary, everyday, healthy-snack staples traveled very far to get to you. Avocados from Mexico, grapes from Chile. Bananas... oh, let's talk about bananas for a second.
The tropical fruit every American eats for breakfast. OK, maybe you and your second cousin's college roommate don't eat bananas, but the point is that bananas don't grow naturally in most of the United States, and yet they're affordable and plentiful for us. That's a problem.
Almost all bananas found in our grocery stores today are the Cavendish variety, because this variety is suitable to mass market: a high yield rate, ability to stay green for several weeks, disease-resistant... but not disease-proof. The main reason we all eat Cavendish bananas today is because the previously dominant variety, Gros Michel (which is said to have been tastier and more bruise-resistant), succumbed to a fungus. Wiped out! So, growers switched to the Cavendish, and only the Cavendish. Why grow any other variety when this one is so popular and ships so well?
I'll tell you why. Variety isn't just the spice of life, it's the failsafe of life. Genetic diversity in agriculture is like diversification in a financial portfolio. If any one cultivar/investment begins to fail, you can rely on the others to keep things running. But instead, a new strain of the fungus is now killing the Cavendish bananas, and there is no other kind of banana readily available for the worldwide marketplace. It's a long and expensive process to cultivate new varieties suitable for multi-national consumers. You might soon have to find a new everyday fruit you love and become a champion of eating locally because local is the only kind of fruit available.
All right, now that we've got that bummer out of the way, let's get back to the fun thing.
The fruit stand. Trying local fruit in a new location.
Imagine you had never seen a banana before, traveled to somewhere tropical, stopped at a roadside stand, and there it was. "This looks weird, but the guy told me to wait until it's yellow, and then it will be delicious. I guess I'll try it!"
That's exactly what Len did on his trip to Florida. He went to a fruit stand called Robert Is Here and found some exotic, locally grown fruits to bring home. Specifically, two canistels, also known as egg fruit, and one mamey sapote.
We had to wait about two weeks for them to fully ripen in our cold midwestern kitchen, but then they all did ripen within a few a days of each other. I've never tasted anything quite like them.
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| The mamey sapotes are the brown, coconut-looking things in front. |
I think we actually ate the mamey sapote a tad too soon. The guy in Florida had told Len to wait until it's very soft, softer than you think you should be, and then wait another day. The sapote was supposed to resemble pumpkin pie -- in color, texture, and flavor. It still had a very slight astringency to it when we ate the flesh raw, so I think we should have waited that extra day or maybe two to give it time to become really custardy. I ended up pureeing the rest and baking it into a pie. Slightly drier texture, but otherwise very similar to a pumpkin or sweet potato pie.
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| Mamey sapote pie, half gone already. |
The cansitels, on the other hand, we timed perfectly. They had a somewhat dry texture (like a hard-boiled egg yolk) but at the same time, so creamy. It really was like eating custard. I'm so glad I tried that.
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| A canistel half, after I've scooped out the big seeds and taken a few bites with my spoon. |
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