Coming at you for this week: paradise produce!
Some of you already know that my mother and extended family is from Hawaii, so I go back often to visit relatives (namely my grandmother), as I did these past ten days. So this week celebrates gifts of the islands.
Papaya is one of those things that people don’t seem to eat on the mainland unless they are from Hawaii or Central/South America–but then again, I may have that wrong. After all, they sell it at Costco, so someone’s buying (however…we’ve only seen Mexican papaya sold there and to my mother and grandmother, that’s junk compared to the Hawaiian papaya, which is smaller but much sweeter and more flavorful. Try to find Hawaii papaya if you can, and yes, we are biased). But there are a number of people I’ve met who have never had one, and while I recognize that spending summers and holidays in Hawaii is a rarity, I grew up eating papaya for breakfast over there so it’s strange to me–never had a papaya? At all?
Well, if you’ve never had one and you’re apprehensive, let me try to assauge your fears: papaya has a sort of melon essence–it has that same sort of mellow watery sweetness that you have with honeydew or cantaloupe. It is, however, a bit more floral in its taste (perhaps that exotic flower-friendly sea air), but not overpoweringly so. The texture is soft and again like a melon. When selecting, papaya ripens sort of akin to a banana–from green to yellow, so go for the more yellow skinned ones that give a little when you touch them. They should also give off a nice scent at the base. To eat one, simply slice it lengthwise in half and scoop out the black seeds (they are edible, but they’re kinda spicy). You can then just scoop the flesh straight out of the skin with a spoon–I like to think that’s partly the reason why Hawaiians like it so much–you’ve got the fruit in its own convenient bowl, perfect for eating on the beach when the surf is down. Or on your communal rear apartment stairwell-porch during the Chicago summer rainstorms, as the case may be.
RECIPE: Ideas for Baked Papaya
Filed under: Clean Food Daily, fruit, hawaii, papaya, tropical fruit
