Fruits of the day: Guayaba and Guanabana

Yes, it's a fruit of the day! Things are busy, and certainly very different--but I know some kids who love fruit, so stopping by the market is definitely still part of my routine.

Now, a few very astute readers may be suspicious that I am recycling an old post. But no, dear readers, guayaba and guanabana are not the same as guaba and guava. (at least in the vernacular used around here). You know, except for like all the letters and stuff. For a refresher on guaba and guava...click here.

Guyaba grow on a tree in our yard, and are a favorite of several kinds of colorful birds and also some impressively large fruit bats. All of this makes it tough to every find a ripe one to actually eat. Which is fine, because the ones in our yard are very tiny and often fairly wormy. There are larger, prettier ones for sale along roadsides at the right times of year. Which it is.

a larger, prettier guayaba

a tiny guayaba from our yard that is predominately worm-free

The flavor of guayaba is light and fruity. They make wonderful additions to a smoothy and is one of the quickest jellies I have ever made. (it sets up very quickly with little added sugar). The inside is full of small soft seeds rather like the seeds in a pepper plant. You eat them right along with the fruit, and they add a bit of pleasant crunchiness. The fruit meat itself is decidedly mealy. It feels and tastes like wet cornmeal would, if it had a little kool-aid powder mixed into it. Not bad at all--but I tend to think of them as ingredients rather than hand fruit. Mostly due to texture. (O.K...and let's be honest, because I'm looking for a way to hide the worms.)


And then there are guanabanas. Most of the guanabanas I find around here are roughly canteloupe sized, but I hear they can be 10 to 15 pounds.  I have purchased them before on roadsides, but they're a relatively soft fruit, and don't enjoy rolling around in a vehicle very much. That's important to our story, because in previous taste tests I was never sure how much of the flavor and texture I was experiencing was a result of heat and generally smashing... but the ones I found here, were lovely and perfect.

a lovely guanabana specimen

some rather battered guanabanas

The outside is soft and waxy and covered with spines. Inside the thin skin is a mass of soft pulpy fibers tightly surrounding multiple shiny black seeds. The texture of the pulpy flesh is tricky to work with. I was unable to cut slices or chunks of the fruit. You basically just have to grab some goo, pull the seed away from it and slurp it down.

Ah texture. Jonathan and I have a friendly running debate about the role of texture in foods. He maintains that texture is not a component of flavor, while I say over-ripe mangoes feel like wet gauze in my mouth and that's nasty.

Texture is definitely something you are going to notice with guanabanas. The family of fruits that they belong to often contain names that include "custard". And if you have been paying much attention you will notice that when things are described as "custard-like" it's usually a nice way of saying "reminds me of eggs and over-aged dairy".

Which brings us to the smell....
Why do so many tropical fruits smell a little bit delicious and a little bit like warm trash cans at an amusement park?
Yep. Again with the custard.

The first bite is surprisingly light and sweet. It reminded me of those really cheap flavored drinks that used to come in flats of plastic bottles with a pasted-on aluminum foil lid. No matter what color you picked, it was labeled "tropical fruit punch" and had this kind of banana-pineapple-lime-plastic- lingers after you've swallowed flavor. It's really rather nice. Although after three or four mouthfulls, I was focused again on the "custardy" qualities and all done with that snack.

The rest of my tasting team, however, loved it.
Two sticky sets of fingers finished that puppy off as fast as I could pick out the seeds.