Passionfruit (Maracuja)

I enjoy the Local Harvest website, even though it currently doesn’t list much in my area, because what it does list is so interesting. It alerted me to a source of duck eggs in Mandan, and a source of FRESH ~organic passionfruit in California. Needless to say I placed an order for the passionfruit, as it is one of my favorite frutas discovered during my trips to Brasil.  I had a cunning plan to start some seeds, train the vines up my cubicle walls at work, pollinate with a q-tip and harvest fruit from the ceiling, but I couldn’t get my seeds to germinate. It’s probably for the best, as the seed catalog warned this variety had a tendency to drop when ripe.

I am especially excited about this as foreign fruits don’t often survive the trip to the States in a condition worth eating. I was trying SO HARD to learn and love the fruits I can grow here in North Dakota (there are many more than you’d think – more in future posts), but these trips set me back years! Tart acerola, mangoes, pineapple every morning for breakfast, coconut water from the vendors on the Rio beach, jaboticaba growing on the edges of the path at the Pao de Azucar mountains, wild bananas visible from the country roads on the way to the Sao Paulo beach… I could not believe how much better the tiny “Silver” bananas tasted than our chalky Cavendish. I knew better, but I did try some just-arrived lychee from the supermarket — it was nowhere near the beautiful tangy lychee Lu bought us in Sao Paulo. It made me remember why I hated canned lychee, actually. (The remainder of the bag is soaking in some Muscat to see if it tastes better as sangria.)

My friends wanted me to assemble some recipes for use of the passionfruit, so when it got here they knew what to do with it. In Brasil I saw it most often as a juice, a fresh sauce over cheesecake or a cream pie, or folded into one of their innumerable light but stiff puddings. It would also work well as a replacement for lemon in lemon curd. Recipes and suggestions follow the fold.

Con report

The state session was well worth going to. While I’m familiar with the small sorts of plants you can find in catalogs and garden centers, it is very hard to get a good understanding of a tree by those methods. Being able to tour Carrington’s research plots of full-grown specimens was a wonderful opportunity, and gave me several more entries on my “I want that in my imaginary garden!” list. For example, I’ve been interested in sumac trees because of their unique lemonade fruit, but the plants themselves are just plain gorgeous. Rather like the papaya trees I saw in Brazil, the branches are architecturally bare of leaves until the very top, forming a beautiful umbrella canopy very suitable for a small specimen tree in your backyard sitting area.