Greetings from Costa Rica

Do Costa Ricans come to our fruit markets and think, "What the heck is that?"

I wondered about this as I marveled at the variety and novelty of the produce revealed in this photograph taken by my sister at the Mercado Central in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Just one single photo and yet so much to check out.

Up on top: Kiwis, got it. They're probably called "kiwis" in Costa Rica, too. When I traveled around Europe on an Interrail pass after college, "kiwi" was the one constant. If you're "kiwi" in Hungarian, believe me, you're "kiwi" in most languages.

The other easy one, with the center/left position: Mandarina, or mandarin oranges. Even if there's some confusion on the mandarin/orange/clementine front, we're basically on pretty firm ground with the popular citrus fruits.

I also see some pears, cantaloupe and avocado on the top part of the picture, with nary a sign to contradict me.

As we go down the picture things grow a bit more exotic.

In the bottom left corner, we can see the sign for "Pitahaya."  Pitahaya,
more commonly known in the US as dragon fruit, is an outstandingly photogenic fruit so it's a bit of shame to exclude it from this - or any - photo. Still, it's an old friend, with just enough familiarity and strangeness to be the star of our most popular "What the heck is that" blog post.

Another "What the heck is that?" friend, rambutan, is located in the center/bottom of the photograph, and is here called "Mamon Chino," which I learned, thanks to this blog, means "Chinese sucker." I can't wait to incorporate this new insult into my vocabulary! The "sucker" part of the name presumably comes from sucking out the fruit after removing the rambutan's thick, spider-firework peel, although I'm not sure how different that is than eating many other kinds of fruits; the "Chino" comes from rambutan's Asian origins.

Finally, the really exotic. 

Is that a pile of guava on the right side? Does the sign read "Guavahi"? The Spanish word for guava is "guayaba," not "guavahi," which, come to think of it, doesn't seem like a word at all. Come on, fruit vendors in overseas produce markets, take some pity on me and work on that penmanship. In exchange, I'll do a blog post on guava (or its even more mysterious cousin, guavahi) soon.

My heart rate quickened at the sight of the pile of "anona" in the center - they looked just like cherimoya, a luscious tropical fruit that I love. Other tropical fruit with army drab armor include guanabana and many other varieties. Tough skin on the outside, ice cream-like flesh inside. Wise farmers all over the warm world - Central and South America; Northern, Central and Southern Africa; the Middle East; South and Southeastern Asia - grow members of the armored family, whose fruits have inviting names like "sugar apple" and "custard apple." Anonnas, as they are known in English, closely resemble cherimoya but have segmented flesh that hugs the fruit's shiny seeds.

Finally, two kinds of Jocote. According to a description from Tasty Tropical Fruits in Costa Rica, jacote are eaten when unripe (green skin) and fully ripe (red or yellow skin), but the fruit is tart either way: “Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes.” If, for some reason, you want to see some Nicaraguan guys hanging out and eating some jocote, check it out here, and marvel at the full range of possibilities You Tube offers. Jocote seems to be the same fruit as siriguela, one of the sour fruits of Brazil's Northeast featured in my friend-of-friend Isabel's slideshow of Brazilian fruit.

Jacote is a fruit which looks like a small deformed golfball and its colors range from green to yellow to red. The fruit can be eaten both when its skin is green and unripe as well as once it has matured and turned red or yellow. Ripe and unripe alike, the fruit maintains a tartness to its flavor. Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes. It is also possible to eat the skin of this fruit as well!
- See more at: http://www.schooloftheworld.org/tasty-tropical-fruits-in-costa-rica/#sthash.j3JJvjkp.dpuf

Jacote is a fruit which looks like a small deformed golfball and its colors range from green to yellow to red. The fruit can be eaten both when its skin is green and unripe as well as once it has matured and turned red or yellow. Ripe and unripe alike, the fruit maintains a tartness to its flavor. Initially upon biting into the fruit your tongue is bombarded by an intense wave of sourness which then subsides into a semi-sweet flavor with a chalky texture. The closer to the pit you get, the sweeter the fruit becomes. It is also possible to eat the skin of this fruit as well!
- See more at: http://www.schooloftheworld.org/tasty-tropical-fruits-in-costa-rica/#sthash.j3JJvjkp.dpuf

Jocote isn't just another tart, Vitamin C laden fruit in Costa Rica: a jocote tree served hosting duties in April 1842 for the peace treaty that overturned the government of Barulio Carrillo. The treaty became known as the "Pacto del Jacote."  Take that, cherry tree that George Washington allegedly cut down!

Whew. That was a lot of information in one photo! Of course, plenty of questions remain. I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the prices, thoughtfully included in the photo. At 532.90 Costa Rican colon to $1 US, the price of 2,500 is $4.75, the cost per kilo for ripe jocote, dragon fruit and rambutan. Cheaper still are the unripe jocote at 1,000 colon/kilo. Why so much cheaper if both varieties are tart? A good question. Anonas are less than half the cost (1200/kilo) of the rambutan, etc., which strikes me as an incredible bargain. 

The real question: how soon could I get there?

Pawpaw at the Union Square Greenmarket

What the heck is pawpaw? And what the heck was it doing at the Union Square Greenmarket?

At Wednesday's market, I saw the expected apples and winter squash, all looking lovely. But at one table I saw something really unexpected.

Pawpaw and kiwi berries at a farm stand!

As you can see from the close-up below, pawpaw is a fruit with creamy flesh and big shiny seeds. 






You can't see, so you'll have to take my word for it, that this aforementioned creamy flesh is really sweet and luscious. This makes sense when you realize that pawpaw is part of the same family as guanabana and cherimoya, creamy tropical fruits that typically show up in New York only in "ethnic" neighborhoods with large immigrant communities. Chinatown, for example.

What was wild to me was that a fruit I would have described as tropical was grown locally - in New Paltz, New York, north of New York City. What was wild was the pawpaw itself! It's native to the New York, and grows in a wide swath of the US, as far west as Nebraska and as far south as northern Florida. 

The pawpaw's fruit looks like a small under-ripe mango. A newspaper article with the appealing headline, "Don't Pooh-pooh the Pawpaw," notes that pawpaw has a long history in the US, first as a Native American staple. Pawpaw fans included George Washington and hungry foragers over the centuries.  Of course, bringing wild "free" fruit to the commercial marketplace isn't cheap. Pawpaws ripen quickly and move quickly to a stinky fermented state.

The particular farmer who was selling the pawpaws is a horticulturalist and gardening author named Lee Reich. He was selling an interesting looking book called Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, which promised to "offer delectable rewards to the gardener willing to go only slightly off the beaten path at local nurseries" for fruits such as maypop and shipova. 

He attracted a small crowd by offering samples of pawpaw and kiwi berries, a tiny kiwi variety also known as "grape kiwis." (I'm still waiting for samples of the maypop and shipova.) Unlike regular kiwi fruit, which have fuzzy skin the color of brown paper bags, kiwi berries have smooth, edible, green skin. They look a bit like quanepas, a fruit I'm assuming is still off-limits for New York gardens, but maybe Lee should confirm this.

Kiwi berries are quite a bit sweeter than regular green kiwi fruits, more like yellow kiwis than green in taste. I've purchased grape kiwis in Brighton Beach a couple of times, but those were already packaged and imported from somewhere else, I think New Zealand. I had no idea that kiwis in any variety could be grown north of New York.

While I was at the stand another gentleman came by to chat with Lee about their shared interest in growing wild persimmon in their metropolitan NYC gardens. Take that, commercial agriculture!  

I asked Lee where folks who were interested in growing these exotic fruits should go for more information, and he mentioned his book and Kentucky State University's land grant program.

Just another day at the Greenmarket! But Lee, what the heck is aki-guni?

What the heck is that? Guanabana

We were walking through Sunset Park, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that includes a large Mexican community. Fifth Avenue, one of the area's main drags, has many street vendors. Naturally, the fruit stands caught my eye -  one in particular.

It offered the usual apples, bananas, grapes and pears - and this armadillo-like fruit.

What manner of alien life was this?

What the heck was it?

Many years ago I discovered cherimoyas, a luscious tropical fruit that looks like this:

Will I hatch into a dinosaur? (Image courtesy of Hannes Grobe, Wikipedia)

Was it a kissing cousin to the mystery fruit on this unassuming fruit cart? The cherimoya is famously delicious, with nicknames like "the ice cream fruit" and a fan base that includes Mark Twain, who reportedly called the cherimoya "the most delicious fruit known to men." 

I was curious about the mystery fruit's interior - would it resemble the cherimoya, creamy and custardy?

Inside the cherimoya: Custard! Custard with seeds! (Image courtesy of Hannes Grobe, Wikipedia)

The fruit vendor was not much help. He said he didn't know the name of the fruit and said he stocked a few of them each week so that customers who had special occasions could impress their friends with a very special fruit. I saw the sign that said $6 and I decided Your Intrepid Reporter needed to invest in further investigation. "No, no, no!" the vendor exclaimed when I handed over my money. "$6 per pound. $24 total. I know, very expensive." I am not so intrepid. I put the fruit back next to the apples on the cart.

Another customer started chatting. "I know this fruit. I am from Jamaica, and we grow it there. It's called soursop,"  I had heard the word 'soursop' but I never associated it with a luscious fruit.  It sounded like a corny insult: he ruined the party for everyone because he was a soursop.  I certainly had never met one in the flesh. I used my phone right away to check it out.

Soursop, courtesy of Wikipedia

It was a match! Wikipedia also tipped me off to various other names by which this fruit might be known, including pawpaw and guanabana. "Si, guanabana!" another vendor chimed in. Mystery solved.

Sadly, the real mystery, how this promising and fabled fruit tasted, would have to wait for another day. A day when $1 change would be given for a twenty and a five and it would be fine.