Hope you enjoyed it!

This was a great experience and I really enjoyed tasting all these fruits and vegetables! I’m not usually an adventurous person when it comes to food, so for the most part, these fruits were all something that I would always be too scared to try on my own! This project provided me with the perfect opportunity to finally try all these strange fruits and vegetables, and it was really exciting for me!

There were many other fruits and vegetables that I didn’t have the opportunity to try out. Just to name a few, I was hoping to try:

• Lychee Berry
• Kumquats
• Ugli Fruit
• Mangosteen
• Purple Sweet Potato
• Chayote Squash
• Jamaican Yam
• and plenty more!

Can you guess which fruit is which?

Of all the fruits that I wrote about, the pomegranate is still my favourite and probably always will be! Compared to the rest of the fruits, it still had the most flavour while still have an appetizing look. If anyone has tried these other fruits or vegetables, let me know how they taste! What were your thoughts on all the fruits that I DID try?

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Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!

Kristine

Pomegranate

I’ve saved the best for last, well I think so anyways!

Pomegranates are my favourite fruit, and every year I cannot wait until they come back in season! I realize they may not be strange or exotic to everyone, but I do know some people who have never tried a pomegranate, and so for those people I’m going to do my best to convince you that they are worthwhile.

Pomegranates are round, red fruit that are filled with about 700-800 tightly packed seeds, called arils. While the whole seed is eaten, it is the juice packet that surrounds the seeds that makes it delicious!  There are many ways that pomegranates can be enjoyed; they can be eaten raw, used as toppings for desserts, mixed in with salads, or they can be pressed to make a juice from them. The taste of the pomegranate will depend on the ripeness of the fruit, but its’ taste can be sweet, sour or tangy.

Now, because this is my favourite fruit, you can probably guess that I really enjoyed tasting it for this blog! The pomegranate that I had was ripened perfectly, so it had a very sweet taste. However, I have tasted bad pomegranates; this usually happens when the pomegranate isn’t ripe enough, and the arils are a much paler colour, with some of them still being rather white. The redder the aril, the sweeter the pomegranate!

Here are a few tips to follow when picking out a pomegranate at the grocery store to make sure you get the best one!

• Look for large, unblemished pomegranates
• Look for plump, rounded pomegranates
• Feel heavy for their size compared to other pomegranates of similar size.
• Pomegranates should be brightly colored with tinges of brown.
• Avoid pomegranates with wrinkled, dull, or pale skin
• Look for pomegranatesthat are free of cuts, slashes, or bruises.
• Pomegranate should be firm to the touch and that its skin must not have a dull finish.
• The skin should be shiny, firm and thin.

How to cut it:

***Cutting pomegranates can be quite messy and the juice can stain clothing, so be sure not to be wearing your favourite clothes while you do this!***

1. Start by cutting the pomegranate in half

2. Next, cut each half one more time, cutting the fruit into quarters.

3. One quarter at a time, carefully separate the arils from the outer skin and membranes over a bowl or container.

4. Discard the outer skin and membranes.

5. Enjoy!

Check out this video for a different (and less messy) way of cutting open a pomegranate!

How to Cut a Pomegranate

Passion Fruit & Granadilla

Passion Fruit:

The passion fruit has a sweet, aromatic flavour, and tastes much better than it looks! It is a very simple fruit to eat; you just need to cut it in half and scoop out the pulp. You can eat it on its’ own or use it as a topping for ice cream, add to a drink, or whatever you can think of!

Passion fruit is native to Brazil and is actually considered to be a berry. When ripe, the leathery, purple-brown skin becomes brittle and wrinkled, and the pulp is yellow in colour with a jelly-like texture that contains edible seeds. The pulp has a lemony, tart flavour and very much matches the smell of the fruit.

When I tasted the passion fruit, I admit, it took a minute for me to work up the courage to taste it. It did not look appealing to me at all, but I knew that I had to try it and get it over with, and I’m glad I did! I got past the look of the fruit and quite enjoyed the taste of it. I decided to put it over a raspberry sherbet that I had, and it turned out great!

     

(I know this doesn’t look all that appealing, but it was delicious!)

Granadilla:

Granadillas are a variety of the passion fruit, so I decided to combine the two into one post!

When trying the granadilla, I had a bit of the same difficulty with working up the courage to eat it. I noticed the texture a lot more than the taste itself. When I did notice the taste, I noticed that it is not nearly as tart as the passion fruit, but it has a strange after taste that I could not describe.

The texture of the fruit is what turned me away from this fruit the most.  The seeds are surrounded by a jelly-like pulp similar to the passion fruit, but I found this pulp to me much thicker, as well as the seeds are a lot crunchier. Overall, I did not enjoy eating this fruit and found the appearance of the seeds of the granadilla to be less appealing than those of the passion fruit.

Cutting the Granadilla:

The outer shell of the granadilla is quite hard, and though I found instructions to cut it in half, I ended up cracking the outer shell a bit and breaking away little pieces at a time. After breaking away most of the shell, I started to gently tug at the seeds and they all fell out at the same time!  The inside of the shell had a coral like appearance, which held all the seeds in place quite nicely. This was definitely the coolest part for me to see, and I enjoyed cutting open this fruit.

                             

If anyone has tried these fruits, I’d love to hear what your opinions are of them!

Pomelo

What it is:

The pomelo is very similar to a grapefruit, but much larger and with a milder taste. Pomelos can be as large as a foot in diameter and up to 25 pounds! It is a fruit native to Malaysia, but is also cultivated in California and Israel.

What it tastes like:

When I first saw the pomelo in the grocery store, I immediately thought that I HAD to try it. I had done some research already and knew it was very similar to a grapefruit, but I had hopes that it would taste another way, because it looked so much different.  When I tried the pomelo, it looked and smelt a lot like a grapefruit.The taste can range from a sweet-spicy taste to a tangy and tart taste, with the one I tried being more tangy and tart.

Personally, I didn’t like the pomelo very much because of the taste. I’m not a huge grapefruit fan as it is, so I can only eat it sometimes and when I do, I have to sprinkle a bit of sugar on it to off-set the bitter taste!

Cutting the pomelo was quite time consuming. It was easy to peel the flesh away from the inside fruit, but it was all the cutting of the little pieces that took the longest!

How to cut it:

1. Cut a bit of the flesh off the top, until you can just see the inside of the fruit.

2. Cut channels into the flesh, dividing the fruitinto quarters.

3. Using your fingers, pull the thick flesh away from the inside fruit.

                   

4. Gently pull the fruit apart, breaking it into halves.

5. Pull the pieces apart, just like an orange, and cut off any remaining flesh or skin.

6. ENJOY!

Cactus Pear

The cactus pear is also commonly known as the prickly pear. Of all the fruit I have tried, this was the one I had the most difficult time deciding what to do with. Cactus pears are typically used for their juice (or syrup), which is used to make jam, candy or drinks. Most of the recipes that I found online were for drinks that only used the syrup, so I decided just to try it on its’ own to see what it would be like!

What it is:

The prickly pear cactus is native to the desert southwest of North America, particularly Mexico. The pear itself is the fruit portion of a cactus that grows to be about four meters in height, and if picked directly from the cactus, a lot of extra care must be taken to remove the cactus spines. However, if you’re just buying it from a grocery store, you likely won’t need to worry about this!

What it was like:

The cactus pear has a very sweet taste to it, but I found the texture of it made it seem a little strange to be eating. One of the websites that I found described the taste as being a mixture between natural bubblegum and watermelon. When I tried it, I found it had a taste similar to watermelon, but I could definitely not taste bubblegum! Personally, I found it tasted sweet but bitter at the same time.

In retrospect , I wish I had bought another cactus pear so I could taste what the syrup is like compared to the fruit itself, because I feel the syrup likely tastes better.  So if any of you adventurous eaters out there decide to do this, let me know what you think of the taste!

How to Cut a Prickly Pear:

1. Slice both ends of the cactus pear off and discard them.
2. Cut one long slice on the body of the pear.
3. Slip your finger into the slice and grab hold of the outer peel.
4. Begin to peel back the thick skin away from the flesh of the cactus pear, once completely removed, discard the skin.
5. You are now left with the edible portion of the cactus pear. You may cut it and enjoy it as is (the seeds are edible too!), or blend it to create a juice!

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I simply just tasted the fruit, but if you wanted to try using the syrup in a drink, I found this recipe for iced tea lemonade that sounds delicious!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unsweetened iced tea
• 1 cup fresh lemonade
• ½ cup of Cactus pear syrup*
• Lemon slices, for garnish

How to make it:

• Combine iced tea, lemonade, prickly pear syrup in a pitcher with ice
• Strain into glasses filled with ice
• Garnish with lemon wedge

*To get the juice, place the peeled pears into a blender and pulse until liquefied. Pour the juice into a fine mesh strainer, pushing the juice into a bowl. Discard the remaning seeds and pulp.  It will take about 2 cactus pears to get ½ a cup of syrup.

White Asparagus

While asparagus may not be strange to everyone, I was sure surprised to see white asparagus at the grocery store! So naturally, I bought it to test it out.

What I found out was that white asparagus is actually grown with a mound of dirt around the emerging stalks to deprive the stalks of any light; this is the very reason why the vegetable is white in appearance.

I wasn’t entirely sure how to cook white asparagus, or if it had a different taste than the normal green asparagus, so I did some searching to see what I could find! I found the recipe posted below, it was really simple and it turned out great!

The white asparagus has a milder taste than green asparagus does and I think I would still prefer the green asparagus over the white, but it was still fun to find out this way! I’d be curious to find out how the white asparagus would taste with other recipes; I wanted to try a recipe with balsamic vinegar that I would normally use on green asparagus but I was a little bit afraid of how the colouring would turn out!

Let me know what you think, or if you try a different recipe, how it turns out!

White Asparagus Recipe:

Ingredients List:

• White asparagus
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 clove of garlic (chopped)
• Seasonings (salt, pepper, thyme, etc)

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Brush a baking sheet with 1 to 2 tbsp. of olive
   oil.
3. Wash the asparagus. Pat them dry with paper towels
   and trim the end of the stalks
4. Arrange the asparagus spears on the baking sheet.
   Do not let them overlap.
5. Mix olive oil, lemon juice and seasonings to pour
   over the asparagus. This will impart flavor and keep the vegetable from drying
   out while it roasts. Whisk 3 or 4 tbsp. of olive oil, 2 tbsp of lemon juice, 1
   clove of garlic, and salt and pepper. Add other seasonings or herbs, based on
   your preference.
6. Drizzle the olive oil mixture over the stalks. Do
   not coat the asparagus entirely. You just need them to stay moist while
   cooking.
7. Place the pan in the oven. Roast the asparagus for
   15 minutes or until the stalks are tender. Check the vegetable periodically to
   make sure it is not getting brown on the bottom. Roll the stalks over if they
   start to brown too much on one side.

 

Before putting the white asparagus in the oven:

The finished product:

Star Fruit :)

This was another fruit that I was really excited to try out! It has a really unique appearance—with five distinct edges in its’ skin, so when you slice it the pieces of fruit are in the shape of stars! When I first tasted it, I was very surprised to find out that the star fruit has a very high water content. I found that it had an indistinguishable taste and crunchy texture, and even after tasting many pieces, I could not figure out what the taste was!  At first, I did not like it at all. I found it strange and I was pretty disappointed; but after eating a few more pieces, I found myself starting to like the strange taste, most likely because it was like nothing I had tasted before. I also passed the pieces of fruit to my roommates and got mixed reviews; some of them really liked it while the rest felt the same way I did.

After this experience with the star fruit, I think I would most likely use it as a decorative element from now on, but I encourage you to try it yourself and see what you think!

What it is:

A fruit with origins from Sri Lanka, star fruit is grown on the Carambola tree that is now found in subtropical regions of the Americas, Asia and Australian. Western cultures tend to use the star as a garnish for other dishes because of its’ unique appearance.

What you should look for:

When buying a star fruit, pick a fruit that is yellow in colour (this indicates that it is more ripe). When the edges of the star fruit have dark brown edges, this is another indicator of ripeness, but be careful because brown spots all over the fruit are an indicator of over-ripeness!

If the fruit is green, allow it to ripen at room temperature until it turns yellow.

Nutrition Fact: 1 cup of raw star fruit contains 41 calories, 4 g of fibre and 76% of your recommended dietary allowance of vitamin C, plus many other nutrients!

Dragon Fruit!

What better way to start than with Dragon fruit?

I was extremely excited to be trying out this fruit, because to me it looks so fascinating. When you see it, it’s just a big pink fruit with strange green stems all over it and really makes you wonder…what is that?!

I found the dragon fruit to be a very mild tasting fruit, but also found out that it is packed full of nutrients like vitamin C and antioxidants!

The inside of the fruit consists of a white flesh that is spotted with little black seeds, and almost looks like a white kiwi. The flesh and the seeds are the edible parts; you do not want to be eating the pieces of the pink skin because they are not healthy to ingest.

I decided to experiment with the dragon fruit a bit and make a smoothie with it! It added a great texture to the smoothie, but because it has such a mild flavour, it did not contribute much to the taste of it. The smoothie still turned out to be delicious, but it would have even been better if there had been a little extra flavour in it…maybe next time I’ll try it with a different kind of yogurt!

The first step I had to do was find out how to cut this thing!

How to cut a dragon fruit:

1. Cut the dragon fruit in half vertically.

2. Take a spoon and run it along the inner edge of the peel to separate the white flesh from the peel.

3. Scoop out the white flesh and cut off any pieces of pink that may be on it.

4. Cut up the fruit whatever way you want! (I cut it into cubes)

Try out this easy recipe to increase the flavour and enjoy it in another way!

You will need:

• Dragon fruit, cubed – 1/2 a large fruit
• 1 banana, chopped
• Blueberry yogurt (or any flavour) – 200 ml

What to do:

• Simple blend the dragon fruit, banana and yogurt together!
• Serve immediately

The finished product:

Try out a dragon fruit and let me know what you think!

Hello!

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! My name is Kristine
Kopechanski and I am a fourth year nutrition student at the University of
Guelph. As part of one of my courses, I have chosen to write my own food blog
on all the strange fruits and vegetables that you may find in your local
grocery stores. I have always wanted to buy all these strange looking fruits
and try them all, and I saw this as the perfect chance to do so!

I will be making 1-2 postings a week for 5 weeks, so be sure
to stay tuned; I will be trying out a variety of fruits and vegetables and
letting you know how you can enjoy them too. For most of these foods, this will
be the first time that I am trying them too, so I will share with you what they
taste like and if I enjoyed them or not so it can help you choose if you would
like to try them as well. I hope to be trying out fruits and vegetables such as
dragon fruit, star fruit, passion fruit, white asparagus, pomegranates, and any others
that I can find!

Thanks for reading 🙂