FRUITS OF BRAZIL - Abricó-do-Pará (Strawberry Guava)

abricó-do-Pará

In evolutionary terms some fruits, especially showy or aromatic ones like peaches or perhaps raspberries, are clearly meant to be eaten  (no discussion of creationism on this blog, please!). Their color, their perfume, and their sweet luscious tastes are meant to make them desirable food objects to animals. The evolutionary job of these lucky animals is to serve as a transport vessel for the seeds contained in the fruit, depositing them in their droppings miles away from the mother plant. Thus, the fruit species is able to reproduce and spread over distances which would be otherwise impossible for the stationary plants. Anyone who has ever seen tomato plants sprouting from the ponds at a sewage treatment plant will quickly get the idea.

There are some fruits, however, which don't have the evolutionary glamour of the "star" fruits. They might be modest in color, not particularly aromatic, or with a taste that's not particularly appealing. How have they managed to be evolutionary successes? The mechanics might not be clear, but somehow the species in question has solved the botanical world's particular reproductive problem - how can I reproduce and spread geographically when I'm rooted to the soil?

At least a partial answer must come from the animal world's voracious appetite and its natural curiousity about sampling anything that might possibly be food. There might only be one appetizing feature of a fruit - maybe only its aroma, or its inviting color - but that's enough for birds to swoop down to nibble at it, or a monkey to pluck it off the tree and sample it, or a human being to cook it up. If the fruit has a flavor that is appealing to those who consume it, it will have won the evolutionary game, or at least scored significant points. That animal will return again, eat more of the same fruit, and distribute the seeds as an unknowing propogation instrument.

There is a fruit native to Brazil, called the abricó-do-Pará, that is an excellent example of this principle. It really is the ugly duckling of the fruit kingdom, yet has spread from its original habitat of Brazil's Amazonian rain forest as far as Mexico and the Antilles. In Spanish-speaking lands is it generally known as mamey, and in English-speaking territories as mammee, mamey, mamey apple or Santo Domingo apricot.

In appearance, the fruit offers little to attract. It is largish (4-8"), irregularly shaped, and has a brownish-grey, thick rind. Under that thick rind, there is a dry, white membrane that has an astringent taste. It is only when one reaches the flesh itself, which is yellow or orange and not fibrous, and pleasantly flavored, that there is any gustatory benefit to eating abricó-do-Pará. And unfortunately, there is little flesh to eat, as most of the interior of the fruit is occupied by a large pit, or stone, which encases the seed.

Humans eat the fruit raw, or cut up in fruit salads. More commonly though, in Brazil and in the Caribbean, the flesh is cooked down with sugar to create compotes or fruit stews. One of the most unusual uses of the mamey is in El Salvador in Central America, where a mamey-flavored carbonated soft drink, kolashanpan, is very popular.

We here at Flavors of Brazil have yet to encounter abricó-do-Pará at our local farmers market, but researching this post has raised our curiosity and we'll keep an eye out for it. The literature we've found always describes the taste as pleasant, but gives no clues as to what the taste is like. If we find out, readers of this blog will be the first to know.

FRUITS OF BRAZIL - Quince (Marmelo)

Although the quince tree (Cydonia oblonga) is not native to the Americas, but rather to the Balkans and Asia Minor, it arrived in Brazil very soon after the first Europeans set foot on the shores of the New World. The first Portuguese explorer to land in Brazil, Pedro Cabral, landed in what is now Brazil in 1500, and it is believed that the quince tree arrived here only thirty years later (1530) on board one of the ships of Martim Afonso de Sousa, commander of the first official Portuguese expedition to mainland Brazil.

The quince (marmelo in Portuguese) was well suited to Brazil's soil and climate, and quince trees began to reproduce and expand spontaneously. Today, most of Brazil's quinces are grown in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. It's in Minas Gerais where the bulk of the present-day commercial crop of quince is harvested.

Quices are a relatively unusual fruit in that they are rarely, if ever, eaten raw. They are very tart and tannic, making them unpleasant to eat in their natural state. During cooking, these tannins mellow (and change color, giving cooked quince it's lovely pink color). In Brazil most marmelos are boiled, sweetened and then reduced to a thick jelly-like paste called marmelada. (The word marmelada is the root of the English word marmalade, although now marmalade usually refers to a jam or jelly made from citrus fruits.)

Marmelada

Marmelada has been a feature of Brazilian cooking since colonial times as marmelada can be preserved for a long time at room temperature, allowing the fruit harvest to last through the whole year. It was extremely popular in the first half of the twentieth century, with its peak occurring during the 1930s, but recently has lost ground to goiabada, a similar paste made from guavas (goiabas in Portuguese). One of Brazil's best-known deserts, poetically called Romeu e Julieta, is a thick slice of marmelada or goiabada served alongside a slice of queijo coalho cheese. Simple to serve as it requires no cooking,  is a marvelous, homey dessert, each bite combining the sweet, floral acidity of the fruit paste, and the cheese's salty tang.

FRUITS OF BRAZIL - Murici (Nance)

When it comes to meat, some folks love beef but can't abide lamb, some love pork and others hate it. We've even heard that there are some meat-eaters that detest chicken, though we've never met one. Same thing with vegetables - there are broccoliphiles and broccoliphobes, there are those who think eggplant/aubergine is the best thing in the universe and those that won't go near anything with the slightest hint of eggplant. The members of the allium genus (onion, garlic, etc.) are particularly notorious in this regard. Many love nothing better than lavish amounts of garlic, for example, while others (and not just vampires) recoil from even the odor of the plant.

For the most part, fruits don't seem to engender such strong and contrasting reactions. Maybe it's because they're normally sweet, which is a flavor predilection built into human DNA, but whatever the reason most people like most fruits. It's not universal, and there are some fruits which fall into the love-or-hate category, like SE Asia's durian. But most fruits appeal generally.

We here at Flavors of Brazil have recently come across a previously-unknown Brazilian fruit called murici which is the exception that proves the rule. We tried it in several forms over several days during our recent expedition to Belém and no matter how it was served to us it tasted just awful. We tried murici juice at the hotel's breakfast buffet, sampled murici ice cream, and even took a nibble of the fruit itself at the Ver-o-Peso market. All horrible. When we asked local residents about the fruit, some claimed to love it, but many admitted that the flavor caused negative reactions in a lot of people. Describing flavor is notoriously difficult, but for us the flavor was unpleasantly herbaceous, almost grassy, quite acidic, oily, and the fruit is only nominally sweet, if at all. We tried doctoring the juice with sugar, but that didn't really help. In Julia Morton's classic book Fruits of Warm Climates, murici is described as "peculiarly odorous" and "varying in flavor from insipid to sweet, acid, or cheese-like."

The murici (most commonly known in English, particularly in the Caribbean, as nance) is native to Central and Northern South America, and has been eaten by natives since long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. The murici tree (Byrsonima crassifolia) prefers open forest and savanna habitats and is very drought-tolerant. In Brazil the fruit is grown primarily in the north and the northeast of the country. The fruit itself is of smallish size, yellow-green on the outside with a whitish pulp and a single large stone.

In Brazil, murici are used mostly in the preparation of juices, sweets, and ice creams, but in other tropical American countries it is used to flavor mezcal (in Mexico) or fermented to make an alcoholic beverage called chicha in the Andes. In Colombia, the fruit is boiled to extract its edible oil.

Our normal practice at Flavors of Brazil is to follow up a post about a Brazilian fruit or vegetable with some Brazilian recipes employing the ingredient. As a favor to our readers, we'll make an exception in this case, and our next post will NOT contain a recipe for murici.

FRUITS OF BRAZIL - Sapodilla (Sapoti)

It's been a while since Flavors of Brazil has posted an article in our long-running but sporadic series on the fruits of Brazil. If readers of the blog have been thinking that the lack of new entries meant that the blog had covered all the fruits eaten in this country, rest assured that we've only just begun to work our way through the hundreds of Brazilians fruits. There are still many that are untasted and unreported, so keep tuned.

Many of Brazil's typical fruits are as beautiful as they are delicious - fruits like carambola (star fruit) or pitaia (dragon fruit) are showy and exotic. A few are downright ugly, like the homely ata or fruita-do-conde (custard apple). But the fruit called sapoti (sa-po-TCHEE) in Portuguese and Spanish-derived sapodilla in English is a real plain Jane - not gorgeous nor hideous, it's just anonymous and rather boring. A fist-sized ball of mousy brown or light chestnut, the outside of the sapoti is unassuming and a bit dull, kind of like a smooth potato or a larger kiwi fruit - it doesn't "sell" itself like many other fruits do (for perfectly logical botanical reasons). If one of the objects of a fruit is to aid plant reproduction by encouraging animals to eat the fruit and thus spread the seeds, it's a miracle that the sapoti has survived for millions of years. But it has, very successfully.

If the outside of the fruit isn't anything special, the inside certainly is, in visual appeal, in aroma and in taste. The flesh is a lovely muted orange with a grainy texture, sort of like a pear. The flesh encloses the fruit's seeds, which number from two to five, and which have a hook at one end that can catch in the throat if one isn't careful. The fruit has a high sugar content and is exceptionally sweet. Some people claim that the taste is malty or resembles caramel or brown sugar. When the fruit is unripe, its high tannin content gives sapoti a sharp astringent quality which dries out the mouth. In Brazil, sapoti is normally eaten fresh, although it is also processed into jam, juice, ice cream and syrup.

The sapodilla tree (sapotizeiro) is native to the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, although it spread throughout tropical America and the Caribbean long before the arrival of Europeans. However, its spread to other tropical zones of the world, particularly India, Malaysia and Indonesia, did come about through the agency of European colonizers. Today, the world center of sapodilla cultivation is India.

The sapodilla tree is extensively cultivated not only for the fruit that it bears, but also for the white-gummy latex found in its bark. This rubbery latex is called chicle, and it was the original base material for chewing gum, although natural chicle is now frequently replaced by manufactured substitutes.

Sapoti can grow anywhere in the tropics, but in Brazil it is associated mostly with the northeastern region of the country. Sapoti is often sold by street vendors in cities of the northeast, even at street crossings during red lights. Taken home, chilled for an hour or two, cut open and peeled, a wedge or two of sapoti is refreshing and energizing. Just one more reason why Brazil's one of the world's paradises for fruit lovers.