Passion Every Which Way: Good For Your Health

I'm talking about passion of the fruit variety.  Brazil's large maracujá are glossy yellow with a juicy orange pulp and are my current addiction.  They have become a regular feature in my kitchen, taking up prime fruit-bowl real estate previously reserved for disappointing apples and pears, which I have finally given up on.

When buying passion fruits you want the ones with wrinkled skin which  are ripe and sweet (in the sweetest way a very sour thing can be).  They should also feel relatively heavy if they are juicy.  I whizz them in the blender with water and pass through a sieve for a righteous-tasting drink.  Add sugar if you want but I prefer it without.  (If you add cachaça and ice you get a caiprinha de maracujá). But my absolute favourite way to eat them is in one of Brazil's finest and the World's easiest to make desserts - the classic Mousse de Maracujá.  Whizz them in the blender again, this time with equal measure of cream and condensed milk and pass through a sieve before leaving in the fridge to set. Eat and die happy.

There is a conviction here in Brazil that the fruit has calming properties, and is therefore a great thing to give hyperactive kids in the evening.  Mine adore the mousse but I'm sure all the sugar in the condenses milk negates the effect.  I'm ok with that, since they're getting an alphabet load of vitamins, anti-oxidants and fibre.  A bonus is that the seeds work naturally to combat intestinal parasites, which is great for my kids who play in dirty sandy playgrounds!

Apparently even consuming the skins of passion fruits can be beneficial as it limits the effects of glucose absorption, helps combat bad cholesterol and improves digestive function.  You can cook it until it's soft and add it chopped to salads but that doesn't appeal to me much.  I bought it today in a powdered format to add to smoothies and baked goods and will report back on how that tastes!

However good they may be, I read that you shouldn't exceed four maracujá fruits per day!  Evidently too much of anything, especially passion, can be a bad thing.

You say tomato, I say...Caqui?

My children were pretty disgusted when I gave them what appeared to be a chopped tomato as their after-supper treat. It was, in fact, a Caqui, and an exemplary one at that. It had been specially selected for me by the disbelieving stall owner at the feira when I told him I'd never eaten one.

I was instructed not to put my dense, shiny, red orb in the fridge under any circumstances, and to eat it 24 hours later, when he deemed it would be perfect. And so there I was, alone at the table, my children long since having excused themselves without bestowing upon theirs a single exploratory lick.

Inside, the fruit looked like a tomato without the seedy bit. Its flesh had the same texture of a perfectly ripe pear, neither slippy or grainy. The skin, also pear-ish, had a bite to it. It didn't have any particular flavour or aroma. Tastewise it simply registered as sweet. Almost sickly. The skin was like toffee. It was pretty much on a par with eating white sugar, which is too bad for my children because they would have loved it! For my part it was okay, but I couldn't help feeling it was just a sin in fruit form.

Trusty Wikipedia informs me, however, that caqui is low in calories (around 80 per 100 grams) and full of vitamins, calcium, iron and proteins. There is apparently a less sweet version of the fruit called caqui-chocolate, which has a more orange hue. Both types are abundant in Brazil, having been introduced by Japanese immigrants around 1916.

And that, my friends, is all I, or the world's free encyclopedia, have to say about the caqui.