Fruit of the Day: Cupuaçu

The results are in, and today's fruit is the cupuaçu!

A few weeks ago in Salvador I ate a chocolate filled with cupuaçu. It was tasty, but mixed with the chocolate it was hard to taste the fruit's flavour very distinctly. There was frozen cupuaçu pulp at the supermarket, but I never bought it, mostly because I could never resist the strawberry pulp. I was also kind of holding out for the fruit itself, but had mostly given up until we passed a fruit stand right here in Brasília with a whole stack of these monstrosities.

The cupuaçu looks like a huge potato, and it's outer shell is very, very hard, like wood. When we bought it, the guy at the fruit stand mimed for us how we should crack it open against concrete. We carried it to the park with us, and after we'd had our fill of jabuticabas, we decided to crack open the cupuaçu.

The insides looked like BRAINS!, only smoother. It separated pretty naturally into two sections where the seeds were held together by really light yellow, dense pulp. We dug right in and were both very pleasantly surprised: Cupuaçu tastes like mild lemon custard, with a texture similar to that of our beloved pinha. It's delicious! We found the pulp furthest from each seed to be the sweetest, and it was more vinegary closer to the seed, so we mostly stuck to the edges. We polished off half of the fruit before packing up the rest in its own handy carrying case to bring home for later.
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Fruit of the Day: Jabuticaba

Yesterday we went to Brasília's city park. It's really nice! On the way, we passed a fruit stand, and guys, I couldn't believe the bounty. You are in for many fruity treats over the next few days, starting with today's fruit, the jabuticaba.

But first, The Future!

Brasília has great architecture (that is, in fact, quite futuristic). Most of it was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, who has a very informative Wikipedia page. All of our Brasília pics are on Flickr.

Now let's talk about jabuticaba.

Jabuticaba also goes by Brazilian grape, and a slew of other names that you can read all about - where else? - on Wikipedia. Jabuticabas are about the size of a big grapes, are squishy like a little rubber balls, and are very dark purple - almost black. The first jabuticaba I ate I didn't like at all. It was super bitter. Then I tried eating the insides only, without the skin, and discovered that that's the way to go. The insides taste like grapes, only even sweeter, like Welch's grape juice. The pulp is very white, and each fruit contained one or two seeds that were easy enough to spit out, especially since we were eating them in the park. If you get your hands on a jabuticaba, we recommend putting the whole berry in your mouth, biting to break the skin and release the delicious pulp, then spitting out the skin and seeds. If you do it just so, you might end up with a little jabuticaba Pac-Man.

Jabuticaba is also the name of a song by Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto, with the most charming lyrics:

If I could name
A fruit for you
It would be jabuticaba
Blue, black and small
On the outside
And soft and sweet within

You can listen to it (for free!) on Grooveshark.
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P.S. We have a lot of new fruit just waiting to be discovered here on Ultra Fine Flair, and I can't decide which one should be up next. So... you get to choose tomorrow's fruit! Vote early and often!

poll by twiigs.com

Fruit of the Day: Romã

The romã is the first FotD purchased here in Brasília. You might recognize it as a pomegranate.

I remember the first time I tried pomegranate seeds. I was at a restaurant in San Mateo, California, and I'd ordered butternut squash soup. It came garnished with crème fraîche and pomegranate seeds. I'd never seen anything like them before! The seeds are about the size of kernels of corn. They have yellowish centers and I've seen them range from pink to dark red on the outside of the seed (I suspect they darken, and sweeten, as they ripen). The ones I bought here weren't quite ripe, and the seeds taste tart and are still a little too crunchy inside. Fortunately I know how great pomegranate seeds can be, or I might dismiss this fruit like I did yesterday's sapoti, which according to more knowledgeable sources actually are delicious when they're ripe.
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Fruit of the Day: Sapoti

On more than one occasion I thought I'd tapped Salvador's supply of new and wonderful fruits, but I always took a second look when we passed a fruit stand and went out of my way to check out the produce section at the grocery store. Just in case. And on more than one occasion, I was rewarded with something I'd never seen before. When I was extra lucky, I could even figure out the name of the new fruit so I could write about it.

One of those extra passes through the fruit section at the grocery store yielded today's fruit, the sapoti, or sapodilla. Sapodillas look and even feel like potatoes. I get pretty excited when a fruit doesn't look like much on the outside, because I've frequently been rewarded with fruits like maracujás and goiabas that are all inner-beauty and deliciousness. And imagine if you were the first dude to ever cut into a watermelon? That guy is a god somewhere, I'm sure.

It has gone the other way, too, like with the cajú - it looked amazing but fell completely short of expectations. And then, there are the straight-up dud fruits, the ones that I'm sure can be cooked somehow or mixed with something to make a delicacy, somewhere, but eaten straight off the vine (OK, out of the grocery store) just didn't please our North American palates. One example is the genipapo, and another, unfortunately, is the sapodilla.

According to Wikipedia, sapodillas are supposed to be delicious. According to me, they are not. The one I tried tasted astringenty and had even more of that chalky texture we found in the cajú and the persimmon, which I now realize probably means those fruits are all high in tannins. Turns out I prefer my tannins in red wine form. The sapodilla has a cute seed, though, that's just kind of tucked inside. I guess that's something.
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Brasília!

We're in Brasília! Brasília is the capital of Brazil, and I've read a lot about how it was designed to be futuristic, and also to not need traffic lights. It was dark when we landed so we haven't seen the future-parts yet, but we can confirm that there are many roundabouts and clover-leaf exits from roads, and we only saw two traffic lights. Nobody at our hostel speaks English, so it's quite the adventure already. As we were leaving to find food, Ken asked one of the guys who works here if it was safe to walk around the neighbourhood. He looked at his watch (8 p.m.) and replied, "Yes, tomorrow." Hrm. We ventured out anyway and ate our fill of cheese-slathered meat (so much for our healthy Bahían diet) and are now safely ensconced in our room for the night.

While we're both less-than-enthusiastic about trading beach-cheese for city life, I'm glad we still have a few days left in Brazil. Happily, we've already found some new fruit at the grocery store! We also saw a discarded coconut with a straw sticking out of it, which is definitely a good sign.

Fruit of the Day: Po(n)kan Tangerine

There are countless varieties of citrus fruits available around here. We've already examined the endlessly-useful lime, and its cousin, the cleverly-disguised Bahían orange. A few days ago we asked at a fruit stand for a sweet orange, and were handed one that was apparently a cross between two other oranges (conveniently available in the adjacent bins). Forgive me, I have no idea what the names of any of these are, but presumably they all contain the word laranja (the Portuguese of -- sing it with me! -- orange). The hybrid orange was indeed the sweetest either of us had ever tasted, without even the slightest hint of tang. It was like eating orange sherbet.

Today we have yet another citrus variety, a fruit that is undoubtedly more recognizable than yesterday's. At the grocery store, it was labeled pokan tangerine, but Google suggests that it also goes by ponkan tangerine. It could also be that pokan is Portuguese for ponkan. No matter, really. The bottom line is, I can't resist buying a fruit that still has its leaves attached. Look at that guy. He's all jaunty.

The ponkan tangerine is squishy, and its skin is a little loose. The loose skin makes it really easy to peel, which I value in a citrus fruit. The cross-section is good and orangey, both in colour and flavour. It tastes juicy and sweet. The best thing about it, though, might be its smell, which currently indicates that I need to wrap this up so I can eat the little guy without getting my keyboard all juicy.
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Fruit of the Day: Cacau

Yesterday was just a regular Saturday here in Salvador, Brazil. We got back from the beach around 5, showered, had a snack. Oh, and then we made chocolate.

You know, like you do on a Saturday night.

It all started last weekend when we were out for a stroll. We passed a grocery store and noticed a new fruit. It was labeled cacau, and when I shook it (oh-so-gently, of course) it sounded hollow inside, like it might contain a pit with space around it. Ken speculated at the time that cacau might translate as cocoa, and later, the internets confirmed his suspicions. Cocoa! A.k.a., future chocolate! While I captured the cacau's outsides for posterity, Ken did some more research, and learned that not only are raw cocoa beans delicious and nutritious, an ambitious individual can use them to make chocolate at home.

We are nothing if not ambitious.

First, we cut off the end of the cocoa pod, and peered inside. It was like Alien in there. It looked really, really gross.

The beans were all held together by a sinewy pulp and came out of the pod as a cluster. A very unappetizing cluster. However, as I am 100% committed to FotD, I tried a bean. The pulp is tasty! It isn't chocolatey in the least, but it's sweet. The beans themselves taste kind of like raw coffee beans. They're a little bitter, but mostly inoffensive. And when you untangle a cocoa bean from all that pulp it's very pretty, and looks like a purple almond. We ate a couple of beans then wrapped the rest of the gooey, pulpy bunch in a rag to ferment. And ferment they did! There is no photographic evidence of fermentation, but after six days, that rag smelled good and fermented. Trust me.

Next, we left them in the sun to dry while we went to the beach and ate beach-cheese and coconut popsicles.

When we got home, we put the fermented, dried cocoa beans in the oven for about half an hour. The kitchen smelled shockingly like chocolate. Then we shelled them and had a bunch of cocoa nibs.

Next up, grinding and conching. For the grinding step, we used a pestle (easily had, with all the caipirinha-making that goes on in these parts) with a clear glass mug, so we could see what was going on. We took turns grinding those beans until they finally started to look like butter. Cocoa butter! At this point they still tasted very bitter, but distinctly smelled like chocolate.

Much Googling revealed that for the conching step we were going to need a fancy machine. We could only assume that people made chocolate before such fancy machines were invented, so we decided to skip that part and just mix in some sugar. Add sugar, taste, add sugar, taste... We added about 4-5 tsp of sugar to the cocoa from a single pod, and it was still pretty bitter, so your mileage may vary.

(Tempering is another optional step that will make your chocolate look pretty, but doesn't affect the taste. We didn't care if we had to eat it blindfolded, so we skipped that step as well.)

After adding sugar, we pressed our fermented, dried, roasted, ground, and sweetened cocoa beans into a ramekin. Ramekin might come from a Dutch word for "toast" or a German word for "little cream," but last night it was Portuguese for "chocolate mould." We then went out for bolinhos de bacalhau (fried cod balls (heh)) and a couple or three caipirinhas. Give or take.

Today, Sunday, there was chocolate. We toasted the miraculous cacau fruit with a cup of the finest Brazilian coffee we could find. And we rejoiced.

UFF Fruit Rating: , obviously. This fruit turns into CHOCOLATE.

P.S. We mostly used the chocolate-making instructions here. They leave a lot of room for interpretation, which we like. The only thing we might have changed was our roasting time. The oven here is very hot (the minimum temperature is 200°C, or around 400°F), and we think we would have had even more delicious results if we'd roasted the beans for 10 minutes instead of 30.

Fruit of the Day: Caqui Rama Forte

The caqui rama forte isn't a tomato, but it could play one on TV.

You probably know it better as a persimmon, yet another fruit name I totally adore. One of our persimmons was orange and the other one red. I know I've seen (and eaten) persimmons in California, but I don't remember them looking like primitive tic-tac-toe boards inside!

The first bite was sweet and juicy and really delicious, but a few minutes later both of us noticed the same chalkiness we experienced way back when with our inaugural FotD, the cajú. Not quite as chalky, but neither of us went back for seconds.
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Fruit of the Day: Acerola

I've seen the packages of acerolas in the grocery store since the day we arrived in Brazil, and I've always walked right past them because I thought they were imported cherries. Turns out I wasn't totally wrong, as acerola also goes by Barbados cherry, or wild crapemyrtle. Wild crapemyrtle! These names just keep getting better and better, don't they?

Acerola are tart little berries, kind of like sour cherries. Also, they're bright yellow inside, which makes me love them even more. They don't have a single pit like cherries; instead, the seed is divided into three pieces that you can cut in between pretty easily. I think this seed-thing would make them a lot more difficult to use in a pie, though, unless someone invents an acerola-pitter.

This afternoon I had a glass of acerola juice. I assume it was sweetened, because it was nowhere near as tart as the fresh berry I'd eaten earlier. The juice was super cold and frothy, and reminded me a lot of the Strawberry Julius drinks I used to get at the Orange Julius in Conestoga Mall in my youth.
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Do You Know What I Love (DYKWIL): Brazil Edition

1. Coconut on the beach! Did I mention that you can also ask the machete-equipped dudes to crack open the coconut after you finish drinking the water, so you can eat the meat? Today on the beach we had the meatiest one ever - seriously, it was a meal in itself. Yum.
2. Sharing cooking & recipes with Jackie. Jackie and Alex run our hostel. Jackie is an amazing cook, and I like to hang out in the kitchen and ask her, "¿Qué hacés?" ("What are you making?") That's how I learned how to make pão de quiejo, or cheese bread, which will be a fixture at all future cocktail and dinner parties.
3. The paintings around our hostel. See: Jackie. She's also an artist with a wonderful eye for colour.
4. Capoeira on the beach: Every day we see guys who could easily compete with the most lithe Chinese 15-year-old in Olympic gymnastics' mat routines. For real.
5. Fruits of the day.
6. Coconut-flavoured things. Everything from cookies to ice cream to dish soap comes in coconut flavour (or scent). Delish.
7. Having sandy toes.
8. Red wine and caipirinhas.
9. The smell of fruit stands.
10. Every shade of brown skin.
11. New friends from Spain, Austria, India, Uruguay, Brazil
12. Midnight Samba, as taught by Jackie. This is one talented individual. Do you wish you were Alex yet?
13. Intense rainstorms that are over in 20 minutes and indicate in no uncertain terms that it's OK to keep sleeping.
14. Speaking of which... 8+ hours of sleep, every night.
15. Pinha.
16. The sound of Portuguese.

Today's fruit is tamarinda, which easily translates to tamarind. You've eaten it on a samosa, I'm sure, but have you ever seen it in its original form?

Those little pods cost all of 75¢. I peeled them and now they're soaking in water to eventually turn into tamarind sauce, which I think will go nicely with the cheese bread we'll eat on the beach tomorrow night. In its raw form, tamarind pulp is so tart that my mouth actually puckered when I tried eating it! I liked it anyway, and I'm betting the sauce will be delicious.
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In other news, on Monday we head to Brasilia (the futuristic-looking capital of Brazil). This afternoon we made a deposit to our hostel there at a local branch of Banco do Brasil, and I'm pleased to report that Ken is even sexier in Portuguese than in English.

Yes, We Have NoMany Bananas

An unfortunate combination of red wine, beer, and cachaça last night means that today's fruit - which you all know and love! - will be presented in pictures. I will tell you that the Portuguese word for banana is, conveniently, banana, and that the bananas here in Salvador are sweeter and more delicious than any I've ever eaten. They're also perfectly snack-sized, and a bunch of a dozen costs about $1.50. We eat them every day.
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More Fruit of the Day posts can be found here.

Fruit of the Day: Umbú

Today's fruit is the umbú, which is also called the Brazil plum or "spondias tuberosa" (how technical!). It looks a lot like a key lime, sometimes with little horns. I tried to cut one open but was thwarted by a very hard pit. The skin came off readily, though, so I peeled it and found yellowish, pulpy fruit inside.

Doesn't that little guy on the right look like a fish? Cute!

I like the taste of the umbú. It's quite tart, kind of like a lime. The fruit really sticks to the pit which makes it a little bit difficult to eat. Ken sprinkled sugar on his to make an all-natural Sour Patch Kid. Delicious! Wikipedia says it's usually boiled down with sugar to make jams or preserves, which makes sense. Also from Wikipedia: The fruit's name comes from the indigenous phrase y-mb-u, which means "tree that gives drink." I like that.
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Fruit of the Day: Genipapo

There really is nothing more fun than browsing fruit stands and grocery-store produce sections to find new and exciting and weird fruits. Today we have the genipapo. The English translations I found were "genipa Americana" and "marmalade box". Marmalade box! What a great name for something. You may use it for your next band.

As is often the case, I had no idea what to expect from the genipapo. I read that it has a natural black ink that can be used kind of like henna to tattoo skin, so I cut into it with some caution. As you can see, its insides were pretty much as underwhelming as its outsides. The seeds are very hard and the pulp has a very strong odour and flavour that are almost chemical. Our taste-testers weren't exactly lining up for seconds. Jackie, one of the proprietors of our fine hostel (and also an excellent cook with whom I've been sharing recipes), told us that it's often used to make liquor, so we might have to check that out. In the interest of research, of course.
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Fruit of the Day: Fruta-Pão

The other day we walked past a fruit stand and I noticed something that I had never seen before, something strange and wonderful. I picked it up and the fruit vendor explained, "That's fruta-pão." Literally, breadfruit. He said it's like bread inside. Fruit that's like bread inside? Who ever heard of such a thing? Ken says it looks like a pumpkin and a lizard had a baby.


We sliced it like bread (obviously!) and it really does look and feel like bread inside. It's very spongy and feels starchy, and it isn't sweet but it also isn't bitter. It tastes a little bit like a turnip, and we both thought it needed some accessories to make it a little more delicious. We looked up how it's eaten and discovered that it's usually cooked up with something sweet; roasted or baked with butter and sugar and coconut milk. So I cubed it and poured coconut milk over the top, then added a bit of butter and sugar and sprinkled the top with cinnamon and coconut to make a sort of breadfruit pudding. The texture still isn't quite what I was hoping for, though. Sliced breadfruit definitely isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Update! I finally remembered what fruta-pão reminds me of: yuca. The kind I've had as "fries" in Peruvian restaurants. Fruta-pão has that same denseness and starchy texture. If I ever happen upon one again maybe I'll try roasting it as a savoury side. Or maybe I'll just try to trade it for a mango.
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Fruit of the Day: Maçá

I almost saved the starfruit for today's homage to the U. S. of A., but in the end I chose a fruit that I could transform into a delicious American-style dessert to share with all the people here in Salvador who have made us feel so at home.

The maçá isn't a sand dollar, but I guess this close to the beach, everything adopts a certain theme.

Maçá is Portuguese for apple, and this is a Granny Smith imported all the way from Chile. Right now it's peeled, cored, sliced, and nestled in a pie crust with a few of its equally tart, green amigos, and will be served up in about an hour with a scoop or two of the closest thing we could find to vanilla ice cream. (I think it's called "creme" -- I was more than tempted by the coconut flavour, but the American half of our operation is a stickler for tradition. And I think he misses the fireworks today, so who am I to argue?)
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Fruit of the Day: Carambola

Ay carambola! What is this fruit of which you speak?

Let's turn it on its side, cut off the end, and see if you recognize the star of today's FotD:

Just in time to be star-spangled, we have a review of the carambola, a.k.a. starfruit. I'm sure you'll agree that it's the prettiest fruit ever. Unfortunately it wasn't the most delicious fruit ever: Our particular specimen were very crunchy and tart and possibly slightly underripe, and didn't quite pass muster as breakfast snacks. But they're enthusiastic, and sometimes that's what counts the most.

Happy U.S.A. Day!
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Fruit of the Day: Morango

As happens every year around this time, strawberries are out in full force in my old stomping grounds, and while I've missed many things about Spring in New York (cherry blossoms and peonies and Saturday morning trips to the farmers' market), strawberry season tops the list.

Strawberries are my favourite fruit. Unfortunately they're just not in season here in the Southern Hemisphere right now, and so I've settled for drooling over various bloggers' photos and recipes featuring these sweet red beauties.

Yesterday though, we were out for a stroll, and we passed an enterprising young man with a cart of morangos (strawberries) for sale. They were the reddest berries I've seen in over three months and I happily shelled out $2 for a package of them. And while they weren't quite the berries of my childhood (wild strawberries picked from the woods behind our cottage in Prince Edward Island), and didn't compare to the huge flats I used to buy (and eat, in a weekend or less) in California for $6 or so, with a splash of cream and a spoonful of sugar, these strawberries took the edge off of a little bit of homesickness.
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More Than Fruit

While it's true that our fruit consumption has more than quadrupled since we've been in Brazil, we have been enjoying other local treats as well, and not just those that can be purchased for a buck or two on the beach. One popular street food here is the acarajé, a patty made from mashed beans that's fried in dendê oil, then split and filled with shrimp paste and other tasty bits, often including little shrimps. Other dining out options include a couple of hole-in-the-wall restaurants between our hostel and the beach, at which we split a moqueca (traditional Brazilian seafood stew) or fried fish that's served with rice and beans and a small salad. With a frosty cerveja, our grand total is always less than $7. And cooking at home is a no-brainer when a meal's worth of salmon steaks can be had for a mere $3 at the grocery store.

Tonight we were introduced to another local culinary delight: the hot dog. After our evening samba workout, a couple of the girls who work at the hostel were making hot dogs, and asked us if we wanted one. We politely declined, because we'd shared a fish stew a few hours earlier, and for me, the caloric hit of a hot dog is only worth it when it's served up in a Nathan's box and eaten on the boardwalk in Coney Island, or as a late-night post-concert snack from Grey's Papaya. But then we watched the hot dog prep. The hot dogs were cooked in a pot filled with onions and garlic and thick red tomato sauce. They were placed all saucily on fresh rolls, then topped with mayo, ketchup, little fried potato bits, and parmesan. Genius. And as Ken was still somehow managing to turn down this hot dog mecca, I was all, "OK, we'll share one!" Apparently this is how they're served everywhere, which makes the place on the corner with the $1 hot dog and juice combo suddenly quite appealing.