Foreign Food: passionfruit

Perhaps the simplest culinary adventure in any foreign place is sampling the unfamiliar local fruits.  Some may remember that I chronicled my discovery of dragon fruit in Bangladesh on our previous blog.  Well, the fruit explorations have begun again.

This time, we began with a fruit we’re familiar with by name and juice, but never as a whole piece of fruit.  The passionfruit is an odd little guy.  Its exterior looks like a wrinkly plum, and feels like a half-deflated stressball.

Once cut open, however, it reveals its mushy, super-juicy guts.  After I cut into the first one, upon looking at the opened fruit I announced to Matt that this one had spoiled.  But apparently, this is what to expect.

We scooped out the seeds, and quickly realized that one passionfruit is too tiny to be worthwhile.  So we cut and scooped through our little collection.

Sadly, the rind is simply discarded.  We were left with the passionfruit guts, which taste – shockingly... – like passionfruit juice, something akin to a mix of orange and pineapple juice.  The difference from the plain juice, though, is that the whole fruit has textures: the seeds have crunch like a pomegranate, and there’s also a pulpiness reminiscent of fresh-squeezed orange juice.  Yum!