Fresh Fruits (and Juices)

A blog post by Adam. As far as I'm concerned they greatest thing about the Dominican Republic is not the world class beaches, or the welcoming and friendly culture, or the baseball. It is, hands down, the fruit. We've had lots of it, and we've tried more new fruits in the past 15 weeks than we had likely sampled in the previous 15 years.

To really know the fruit you need to taste it. But since Google's blogger website does not yet offer a taste function, we'll do a mini fruit (and juice) tour via pictures.  We'll focus on the most exotic, which means no pineapple or banana (always available) or mango (very popular and varied - the DR hosted the international mango conference in May).

Before I get to the pictures though, let me say that without our trusty Hamilton Beach blender (purchased at a California Bed Bath and Beyond for a fraction of the price of a similar blender in the DR) we would have never arrived at fruit paradise. Ultimately, it is the blending of tropical fruit, a fast moving blade, a little sugar, and sometimes some milk and ice that make fruit heaven possible.

Let's start with our favorite....Zapote or Sapote in English. On first sight it looks like a potato. Inside it's sort of like an orange avocado.....

It becomes the most amazing shake. Sort of tastes like a creamcicle milkshake....look at the happy customer.....

Carambola, or star fruit, is so uncommon here that our neighbor didn't even know what it was. We've never seen it in the store, but our Santo Domingo host family gave us a nice supply when we last visited them. Interestingly, several fruits, like starfruit and small guavas, are not regularly sold in stores, but are shared among people who have fruit trees at their homes. We think our host family likely got the star fruit from family who live in the countryside (there isn't a lot of room for trees in their second floor condo). Here we are preparing it for juice...

And here I am drinking it. As with most things, with a good amount of sugar it's pretty tasty.

While limoncillo also isn't in stores, over the summer it was everywhere on the street. It's sort of sweet and sour with translucent flesh and a large pit at the center. I find it mildly tasty and is best served with a generous supply of dental floss.  

Nispero. Or Dominican Loquat. Or Sapodilla. Tried it once. It was decent. Zapote is better.

Outside it usually looks pretty rotten.

Inside it looks like alien brains, either of the yellow or orange variety.

This is chinola (in the DR), or maracuya (in other Spanish speaking countries),or passion fruit (in English) and its juice is tasty. You throw the brains into the blender, blend briefly, strain it, return the unstrained residue to the blender for a second blending, strain again, add water and sugar, and you're good to go.

 

And finally, Dominican cherries, or cerezas. I think it's pretty good. Melissa thinks it's OK. Mina refuses to drink it because she overdosed on it when she was sick with dengue. That was three years ago. I guess the stuff provides a powerful and long-lasting punch.

Cleaning the cherries...

 

And drinking them...

There are of course other fruits we rarely (maybe never) see in un-tropical Washington, such as the aforementioned guava (stupendous in all forms), sour orange (amazing juice, a slightly sweeter limeade), guanabana (the subject of a previous post), and noni (used exclusively for medicinal purposes...we've never tried it). And this, my friends is just the beginning. During lunch the other day, a coworker spent a half hour describing various Dominican fruits that were foreign to most of the other Dominican clinic employees. I guess you'll just have to come here to experience it yourself.