Greetings from Cartagena de Indias, Columbia!

Brrr....baby, it's cold out! You know what that means: time for some virtual Southern Hemisphere travel!

These sunny produce photos come to us from my friend Bethanne, who needed some beach time and sun. She headed to Cartagena, on Columbia's Caribbean coast.

Cartagena comes highly recommended. Here's a description from Lonely Planet: 

Catagena de Indias is the undisputed queen of the Caribbean coast, a fairy-tale city of romance, legends and superbly preserved beauty lying within an impressive 13 km of centuries-old colonial stone walls.

What could be better? Oh yeah, some great produce! An Epicurious article, 12 Things to Eat in Cartagena, had this to say:

We're only slightly exaggerating when we say you can spend all your time in Cartagena sampling the mind-blowing selection of sweet, sour, acidic and just plain fascinating found-only-in-Columbia fruits. Try as much fruit as you can, whether it be a salad from one for the brightly dressed Palenqueras setting up shop in the shady Plaza de la Inquisicion; a street-vendor-sold fruit like uchiva or anon, with its pineconey exterior and sweet and custardy interior; or a morning juice of nispero or maracuya (passion fruit).

What are these fruits? My Brazilian friends introduced me to South American sweet-tart and best-for-juices sour fruits, and Columbia seems to have plenty of them too. Thanks to two helpful guides, Columbian Fruit: My Mission to Try Them All and Fruits in Colombia, I learned more about the Columbia's produce offerings. Uchiva, for example, is also known as the Cape Gooseberry and looks like a cherry tomato covered by a husk. Yes, very similar to the husk cherries I've bought at farmers' markets in New York! Anon is another member of the lizardy and delicious armored band of fruits that include the cherimoya and guanabana.  Maracuya is one of a zillion kinds of passion fruit found in Columbia. Some other kinds are granadilla, gulupa and curuba. 

Bethanne thoughtfully included a picture of some passion fruit from the fruit vendor. Passion fruit have many seeds encased in goopy capsules, hence the appeal of using them for juices or jams. 

(My South American friends have tended to be huge passion fruit enthusiasts, but I haven't really enjoyed the passion fruit I've bought at NYC fruit stands. Fair enough: I am withholding judgment until I get closer to the source. I sure wouldn't want someone to form an opinion before trying a NYC bagel.) 

Another fruit mentioned in the Epicurious article, and included prominently in the second photo and photo below: nispero. Nispero, and the similar but larger fruit, zapote, look a bit potato-like, with a peel the color of a dirty paper bag. Zapotes are tropical fruits I first encountered in Asia, and nisperos looks like kid siblings, sized more like kiwis than spuds. Zapotes taste like sweet potatoes, albeit with an astringent kick. I assume nisperos are in the same family of taste. I wouldn't have thought to juice them, but it looks like the juicers are always running in Columbia, so every fruit has juice potential. (I am not knocking this innovation, similar to the thinking that gave the world deep fried Mars bars.)

Not everything for sale is that exotic, of course. Bananas, papayas, avocado and tamarind are prominently offered.

So are grapes, oranges, apples and pears.

Avocados!

Tomatoes, carrots, peppers, pineapples, cucumbers and limes.

I think those rosy fruits in front next to the zapotes are mangoes. I'm hoping the blackish purple fruit next to them are something exotic, but they might be plums. And where are the shoppers?

At least one shopper has found something. Well, produce isn't the only agricultural product available. 

And after all, no one can live on jugo de maracuya alone.

What the heck is that? Tamarind

When my friends Anna and Rabi took a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, I said the same thing I say to all my traveling friends: "Send me some pictures of the produce! Send me some pictures of the produce markets!"

Anna said that the town she visited was too small to have an interesting market. Instead, she took a picture of something else that I found interesting: a tamarind tree.

Anna’s husband Rabi is originally from Sri Lanka, where tamarind is extremely popular. Actually, tamarind is popular all over the world. The word “tamarind” comes from the Arabic words “tamar hind,” or ”Indian date,” but tamarind’s popularity extends far beyond just South Asia. The tree is indigenous to Africa, but now grown in warm spots everywhere. In Mexico, tamarind is a big star, showing up in Jarrittos sodas, agua fresca beverages and ices. Just about every tropical country has some candy or jam that features tamarind, and many cuisines, such as Thai and Indian, use tamarind to give recipes  dishes a certain sweet-sour piquancy. Evidently English colonists couldn't get enough either: tamarind is a key ingredient of Worcestershire sauce.

Here are some highlights from the extensive tamarind foodstuff collection at Kalustyan's, the wonderful international spice store: juice, two kinds of candy, chutney, paste, concentrate, etc.

More recently, however, I’ve started to see something even more interesting for sale: fresh tamarind. I've found it in Chinatown, naturally - all interesting produce sooner or later shows up in Chinatown - and East Harlem, which has many groceries catering to Mexican shoppers. 

I had to try it.

The picture on the tamarind box was pretty accurate: brown pods with a crackly shell and a sticky interior. A twiglike vein ran the length of the pod, and seeds hid underneath the sticky fruit.

The tamarind pulp was certainly tropical fruit-sweet, like dates or dried bananas, with the puckery tang that has made tamarind popular in cooking.

I got into a bit of a groove: Crack off a bit of the shell, peel off the rest. Loosen the twig-vein, which I found somewhat repulsive. Bite off a section of tamarind. Spit out the shiny seed. Chew the tamarind pulp.

Contemplate whether in fact I liked tamarind. Decide I wasn't sure. Reflect on the flavor's similarity to fruits I don't particularly like - bananas, dates - but acknowledge that this sticky sweetness is offset by the tamarind's tang, which I did enjoy. Consider the need for for more experience of that flavor. Bite off another section. 

When there was no more tamarind pulp left to chew, I was forced to acknowledge that I did like tamarind, won over, as millions or even billions of people have, by its sweet-sour charms.

It's hard to argue with a pile of seeds, twig-veins and shell bits.