Wednesday 14 September 2011

For your next trip to Tesco.....

 If your idea of fun is asking the supervisor of the fruit and veg section of your supermarket for some unheard of essential ingredient for a recipe you've just found, then here are a few ideas for you  - some of the fruit from my last post.

How about some cas?


Or some pithaya?




Or a kilo of mamon chino?



Or a nice zapote?




Or even a few jocote?


                      I'm all right, Jack....until it comes to making apple pie....

20 comments:

  1. What? No Terry's Chocolate Oranges?

    ;-)

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  2. What wonderful colours are the mamo., zapo. and the pitha.
    Thanks so much for sharing.

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  3. Steve, no, Costa Rica has not yet reached that level of development...

    Lesley, gorgeous, aren't they!
    The pithaya drink looked very sinister at first...purple drinks aren't really in the European model, somehow...but it is great!

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  4. They look incredible, but what in the world do you do with them?

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  5. ADoC, the cas I skin and liquidise with a little water, then strain out the seeds. I freeze the pulp in blocks to make drinks throughout the year.
    The pithaya likewise...it makes the best fruit drink I have ever tasted.
    The mamon chino...eat some fresh and put the rest down in syrup for desserts later.
    The zapote...eat some fresh...the rest goes down for fruit cheese...a paste with sugar. Think of medlars and this is not far off.
    The jocote is for eating fresh...when they're red they have a zippy sweet sour taste.

    There's some super stuff down here...but I need new recipe books!

    The apples available here are total crap, so for chutneys I'm using green mangos and chayote...not quite the same but giving reasonable results....but apple pie is out!

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  6. What lovely and colourful bounty you have...Sometimes I'm envious!

    I was laughing at your banana posting...Have you ever dipped frozen bananas in chocolate? They're lovely.

    So much more healthy than the fruit and veg from the supermarkets here.

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  7. e, you must be familiar with most of not all of these...
    Frozen bananas in chocolate! Not yet...but I will be..

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  8. Turning green with envy here at the colours and sheer exotic beauty, Fly. I and my jam pan are itching to see what we could do with them all.

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  9. Perpetua, it is fun using new fruit...though I do miss my raspberries and mulberries.
    We could have them if at a higher altitude, but they don't appear in the markets.

    Mark in Mayenne, they are spiffing!

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  10. Fascinating and thank you for the education FlyRica. Never heard of any of these, let alone eyeballed them. Nor have the fruit & veg team at Tesco’s oddly enough, even when I translated into Polish. I often make a simple cold and tangy Indian sauce dip for my tribe, comprising mango pulp and plain yoghurt in equal measures, castor sugar to taste, and finally a good desert spoon of mint sauce from a jar. Blend it all together and you have a quick and yummy dip for papadums, curried or BBQ’d meat and poultry, and so on. Looks to me like at least one of those little critters up there might work instead of the mango part. Baked bananas and mars bars with a sprinkle of cinnamon and Demerara sugar, topped off with a raspberry or strawberry syrup or liqueur is a bit of a wild and sensual ride for the old taste buds too. Tesco’s stock mars bars by the way.

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  11. The cas looks similar to a custard apple - is it? The mamon chinos look a bit like those little lumpy red fruits they serve in Chinese restaurants, and the pithaya looks good enough to eat. :)

    What a gastronomic wonderland.

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  12. Bish Bosh Bash, I made your mango and mint thingy and it is very good indeed!

    Nodamnblog, I know it's from the guava family...and the mamon chinos are just like lychee...the pithaya makes a great drink and the Costa Rican recipe blog on my side bar has other suggestions too.

    It's a lot of fun....I bought something calling itself cola de bagre today - fish, but not as I know it, so we're smoking some, frying some and poaching some...just to see what it's like.

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  13. Oh yum. What a delightful post to come back to - I still aren't getting feeds from you, but like to check in occasionally.

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  14. Most of these are grown, if not here, a little further north. I'm in Mackay, Qld.
    I have some tropical recipes in a book somewhere.email me if you'd like more info
    diane(dot)patmore(at)gmail(dot)com

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  15. Either da plan worked, or a very strong feeling of déjà vu got here before me again and has just dished me up a nice cold beer and a plate full of parrot beak canapés, so thank you…and yes, I think I’ll stick around here for a while.

    Never liked the old place anyway. Plumbing and electrics were appalling. Nothing seemed to work when you wanted it to and the room service was pretty shocking. Now if you can get your man to bring my Tesco bags up to my room, I’m going to stroll off to the beach for a bit.

    Come to think of it…where exactly 'have' you put the beach in here?

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  16. From my Singapore time I would call the first three 1. a sort of guava, 2.dragon fruit but the ones I had were white in the middle and tasted of runner beans! and 3. rambutan. Might help finding recipes to have some different names for them.
    Mostly we decided we could see why most of the unfamiliar ones had never made it west!

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  17. You said there's a Costa Rica recipe blog on the sidebar? Would love to try some of your recipes, but can't find them.

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  18. The Pitahya and mamon chino look astonishing - too good to eat really.

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  19. You must have industrial sized freezers with all the stuff you need to freeze.

    The pictures are lovely. I hadn't heard the names of any of the fruit before!

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