I Love Yogurt

Above, one-quarter of the glorious yogurt isle in Carrefour.

Dairy products - outside of 1-gallon milk jugs, pre-sliced American cheese and ice cream - being completely absent from my Chinese mother's kitchen, yogurt probably made a very late appearance in my life. I don't really even remember eating yogurt, much less enjoying it, before living in France. But I do remember suddenly liking yogurt very much the semester I studied abroad - so much so that I wrote home about it on several occasions. Why the change? Possibly because there is a significant difference between when Americans eat yogurt and when the French eat yogurt; Americans eat yogurt as a breakfast food, or as a snack whereas traditionally, the French eat yogurt as a dessert. There is something particularly satisfying in a cool, sweet, light dessert after a meal. But mostly because there was a significant difference in taste. I remember eating tiny tubs of unctuous stracciatella from Danone, fruit tarts in yogurt form from la Latière... I even enjoyed the creamy prune yogurt!

One of the pleasures, then, of living in France is the yogurt. Besides the typical strawberry-, peach- and cherry-flavored yogurt, there are more local flavors available in the supermarket aisles here.

Above, Danone's Velouté Fruix, Yoplaît's Caresse and Littée's Mixé.

Danone's Velouté Fruix has Guava, Coconut, Mango, and Passion Fruit/Peach. Yoplaît's Caresse has Guava, Piña Colada, Litchi, and Passion Fruit/Peach. Littée's Mixé has pineapple, mango, guava and vanilla. Veoluté Fruix and Caresse are fairly similar - quite tasty - and when we are at the store, we choose whichever one happens to be on sale at the moment. Littée, whose neon-colored labelling might serve as indication, is a bit too sweet.

Occasionally, when there is some pineapple in the house, I will cut up some pieces and add them to some coconut yogurt, with a splash of rum. A bit rich? ... not at all.

Passion Fruit

Above, left, a passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), right, a water lemon (Passiflora laurifolia).

I tasted my first passion fruit during my first trip to Guadeloupe. Before that, I had only known passion fruit as an artificial flavor, like the way most city kids - myself included - know the taste of blue and red before they've ever had real blueberries or cherries.

Passion fruit (fruit de la passion in French, but known locally as maracudja after the Spanish name) are quite common on the island, found in backyard plots, or its vines running along a roadside fence. For those who do not have their own passion fruit vine, or who do not benefit from friendly relations with neighbors who do, passion fruit are also sold in local markets and sometimes even in supermarkets. There are also a range of food products with passion fruit derivatives, such as passion fruit-flavored yogurt, passion fruit juice, or passion fruit mousse tortes at the patisseries.

Far less common is the water lemon (pomme liane in French), another variety of passion fruit from the genus passiflora. This water lemon was purchased at the market in Basse Terre from a woman from Dominica who specializes in selling native fruit.

Passion fruits and water lemons are quite similar. The passion fruit is round to oval in form with an airy foam-like rind and a very smooth light yellow skin. The water lemon is round to ovoid in form with three distinct sides with an airy foam-like rind and flocked goldenrod-colored skin.

Above, left to right, a passion fruit and a pomme liane, both cut in half.

Inside both fruits, a mass of small black seeds encased in thin sack of juice. At first glance, it is not convincingly appetizing, the insides resembling embryonic creatures - tadpoles, maybe - , something vaguely sinister.

Above, a close-up of, top, passion fruit seeds, and, bottom, water lemon seeds.

The difference in flavor is advertised by the difference in color. Passion fruits are tart, acidic. Water lemons - in opposition to its name - are sweet, floral like roses. Because I like my fruit to be sweet but sharp I prefer the taste of passion fruits. I dislike water lemons for the same reason I dislike Turkish delight - I don't eat soap. M. happens to love water lemons precisely for its less aggressive flavor and so keeps the woman at the market in a steady business.

Marie Denise's Fruits and Vegetables

Marie Denise's fruits and vegetables stand at the market in Basse Terre:

Above, papayas, soursops (guanábana), passion fruits, star fruits, bananas, cucumbers, bell peppers, giraumon, scotch bonnet peppers, piments vegetalien, tomatoes

Above left, bananas, star fruits, passion fruits, soursops, papayas
Above right, watermelons, papayas, zucchinis, chayote, eggplants

Above, pineapples, plantains, yams

Mammee Apple and Almond Tart

Encouraged by a successful pineapple coconut tart, I thought I might try another recipe from Sophie's tarts book (1). With pineapple and coconut as its main ingredients, that recipe was rather tropical to begin with. This time, I thought would use one of Sophie's more traditional recipes, but with local fruit and local flavors.

From Marie Denise's stand at the market in Basse Terre, I purchased a large abricot pays, or mammee apple (2). Abricot pays translates simply as 'local apricot.' It is almost always comic when comparing the 'original' fruit and its local namesake since there never seems to be much in common - one characteristic at most. The mammee apple is round and somewhat larger than a grapefruit. The skin is tan to dark brown in color, dry and hard. It peels off easily with a knife to reveal a beautiful deep orange flesh.

The color is similar to an abricot...or to a mango, or to acorn squash. The flesh must be cut away from the large round pit, a wet and messy procedure that recalls emptying a pumpkin of its seeds. The pit fits nicely in the palm of the hand like a ball of thin string pressed tightly together with great force. Cut into small pieces, the glistening fruit resembles some unknown precious stone.


The fruit smells curiously like royal jelly. It has no particular taste. But it slides slippery soft and sweet down the throat.

I decided to use Sophie's recipe for pear and almond tart (tarte aux poires et aux amandes). Two mammee apples and rum replace the can of pears in syrup and the pear liqueur.

Ingredients:
1 shortcrust pastry
2 mammee apples
100g crushed almonds
100g softened salted butter, cut into small cubes
1 egg
20g slivered almonds
2cl rum

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll out the shortcrust pastry over the tart pan. Gently press the pastry into the bottom and sides of the tart pan. Set aside in the refrigerator.

2. Peel the mammee apples. Cut the flesh away from the pit. Cut the flesh into thin slices.

3. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the sugar, butter cubes, crushed almonds, egg and rum.

4. Spread the crushed almond mixture in the bottom of the tart. Lay the mammee apples slices over the mixture. Sprinkle the top with the slivered almonds

5. Bake for 30 minutes.

I hadn't realized how large the pit was, and had only purchased one mammee apple. So my tart was a bit lacking in fruit. The tart was still edible of course, but the small flavor of the fruit was a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of tart. I am certain that bigger taste could be achieved with more fruit.

When cooked, the fruit wrinkles a bit like a raisin. I didn't find the wrinkles incredibly attractive, and so I would recommend mixing the mammee apples into the almond paste before pouring the entire mixture into the tart pan. I don't believe there is a technical reason behind laying the pear slices on top of the almond paste. And since the deep orange color is quite strong, it would still show up nicely underneath the paste.



(1)
Dudemaine, Sophie. Tartes et Salades de Sophie. Geneva: Éditions Minerva, 2004.



(2) Mammee Apple

Pineapple Coconut Tart

I have been keen to try making some tart recipes from Sophie Dudemaine's Tartes et Salades de Sophie (1). Sophie had had a runaway success with her first book, Les Cakes de Sophie in 2000 and Tartes was her second book, published 4 years later. I hadn't heard of her until almost 6 years after she had published her first book, and by then she was a veritable one-woman corporation with a an entire series of books, a cooking program, tied sponsorships, etc. For that reason, she has been called the French Martha Stewart. The comparison is certainly a marketing gimmick because their styles are complete opposites. Whereas Martha introduced perfectionist cuisine and homemaking to an American public, Sophie does the exact opposite. Sophie introduced French cooks to easy and original recipes. I highlight original because the French are quite rigid in their ideas of food, and Sophie has said that when she first started making and selling cakes, customers were very wary of trying anything except the classic cake recipe of ham and olive (2). She also isn't afraid to use shortcuts in the interest of time and economy; for example, she often uses canned fruits in her sweet recipes, and uses pre-prepared pate feuilletée. She writes in her introduction that she would like to make her recipes accessible, and so takes into account the possibility that not all her readers can purchase fresh ingredients, or have the time to spend hours prepping in the kitchen.

Anyway, with my new electric oven, I am finally able to bake to my heart's delight. I had a bit
of trouble at first since my electric oven heats from the top (unlike a regular oven, which heats from the bottom). I made a few tarts, savory and sweet alike, which turned out with uncooked bottoms. I've now worked out that I must prebake the tart crusts, especially since I use a very pretty, but slightly thick, ceramic Geneviève Lethu tart dish.

This recipe stuck out because of its principle ingredients - it seemed very Antillais. Sophie's recipe calls for a small can of pineapple slices and packaged grated coconut, which is in line with her philosophy of easy cooking. However, I would have felt somewhat ridiculous in using imported packaged pineapple and coconut. It is not simply a question of taste, but a small gesture to support the economic and ecological benefits of eating locally.


Of course, replacing ingredients in recipes is always a tricky matter, and in my case, not always successful (3). But, I'm always ready to give it a shot and hope for the best.

I bought a medium-sized pineapple and a coconut from the market. Marie-Denise's husband was kind enough to remove the coconut flesh from the shell - an operation, he informed me, often resulting in serious injury in the hands of tourists. I'm not a tourist, but close enough!

I was worried that the coconut might be difficult to grate, and had therefore intended to delegate the job to M. But, he was not around when I began and so, I ended up doing it myself. To my relief, it grates much like a carrot, with the brown skin a bit tougher but all together possible with my flabby arms. While I was grating the coconut, I ate one of the end bits and I was surprised by the taste. I suppose I expected the taste of coconut icees in the summer, or candied slivers from chinese new year's. Instead, it tasted rich and oily and ... not sweet. I thought about the last time I had a fresh piece of coconut, and realized that I couldn't remember. Perhaps never. So strange, I thought, to have lived so long and to have eaten coconut, but not having ever eaten coconut at all.

Its a bit the same with pineapples, actually. I had my first taste of fresh pineapple when I was 18 (!). I was an undergraduate college student working in a campus brasserie that had fresh fruit smoothies on the menu. I prepared my first pineapple before ever having tasted one. I must have prepared a dozen before I finally secretly slipped a piece in my mouth. It was a revelation, that piece of pineapple.

Back to the recipe. In the end, I ended up using about half the pineapple. I could have piled on all of it on top of the tart, but was afraid that the juices might overwhelm the tart and spill over, especially since freshly grated coconut is less dry than pre-grated coconut. As instructed by Marie-Denise's husband, I froze half of the coconut for future use, and grated the other half for my tart. I ended up using less than half for the tart (4).

The pineapple coconut tart turned out extremely well, and is my first baking success here. Certainly the fresh coconut, speckled brown, makes for less pretty presentation, but the taste is clean and not overly sweet.








(1)
Dudemaine, Sophie. Tartes et Salades de Sophie. Geneva: Éditions Minerva, 2004.





(2) As quoted in her bio (in english), l'internaute.

(3) I tried making an apricot tart from the same book using mangoes. The entire thing ended up in the garbage.

(4) What do do with any remainder shredded coconut? Drizzle a bit of olive oil, and sprinkle on some salt and freshly ground pepper and you have a nice little salad. It only seems strange because we associate coconut with sweet - coconut cake, pina coladas, etc. Even savoury dishes with coconut are usually salty-sweet. But there is nothing inherently sweet about a coconut. Try it!

Cashew Apple

Above, left to right, unripe cashew apples and a single ripe cashew apple.

Yesterday, our granny neighbor offered us a perfectly ripe cashew apple that she and her daughter had picked from the great cashew tree growing at the end of the street. When the tree first bore fruit a few months ago, M. and I marveled at the bright red fruit with the cashew-shaped 'tail.' We hadn't known that it was a cashew tree. And, actually, at the time, we took one of the fruits that had already fallen off, thinking it wouldn't be missed.

I took a picture of it, with the intention of eating the fruit that evening. But it sat on the table on the terrace, forgotten, and eventually thrown out. There is certainly some reluctance to eat something without knowledge of it being good, at the very least confirmation that it isn't downright unpalatable. A fearless explorer, I am not.

Left, the uneaten (stolen) cashew apple. What is eaten was done so by the bats that flock to the tree.


But this time, the cashew apple was offered as (tasty) food by an Antillaise. She told me to eat it skin and all. The fruit was extremely soft, like a ripe tomato; I felt as if I could squish it entirely in one fist. I cut the fruit in half and was surprised to find that the inside bore an uncanny resemblance to flan or egg custard. M. watched as I placed a wedge in my mouth and chewed. It was smooth and soft like flan, except that there were rather tough fibers. Almost as if someone had placed baked bits of cheesecloth in their flan. Eventually, the fibrous bits went down, but for subsequent pieces, I spat those bits out.

It tasted like very sweet apple. Surprising, given that most of the time, the name of the fruit bares no resemblance - in taste or form - to its namesake. For example, the caimite or star apple neither looks or tastes like an apple. More likely, its name characterized it as an edible fruit.

M. hesitated much before trying it, and did not like the texture at all. I suppose my description of cheesecloth baked in flan wasn't very appetizing. I admit that while it tasted good, the eating was strange. An alien fruit - even when sweet - is somewhat hard to swallow.

Caimite

My in-laws arrived a week and a half ago, which has greatly disturbed my ability to post. But, they offer some new experiences.

For example, having visited an arboretum, they came home with a small bag of fruits. Included were a great number of guavas and tiny tangerines. There were two star fruits - lovely in form, but in general, not very tasty - and a strange new fruit.

The fruit is round and about the size of a baseball. It resembles a plum in several ways. It is a deep purple. The fruit has a smooth leathery skin, covering a soft flesh.

They had been instructed to cut the fruit in half and scoop out the insides to eat. (As one would a melon, they said. I don't actually eat my melons that way. So, perhaps more like an avocado...)

Once cut, the fruit startlingly resembles flesh. The deep red seems to bleed into the white flesh through tiny capillaries. It is as if one held a morsel of fish, freshly cut, in one's hand.

The fruit is soft and very sweet. I thought it tasted very similar to a loongan. I think my mother would love it, as it has not one single note of acidity.

Curious, I did a simple search on the web. It's called a star apple in English. Unfortunately, we had cut our fruit transversally. Had we cut it laterally, we would have seen the black seeds emanating from its core in its characteristic star formation.

I found this short passage in an English book published in 1830 about the Star Apple:

Star Apple—Chrysophyllum Cainilo.
This is also a native of the West Indies. It grows on a moderately-sized spreading tree, with slender, flexible branches. There are some species, or, at least, varieties of the fruit. The star apple, properly so called, bears fruit resembling a large apple, which, in the inside, is divided into ten cells, each containing a black seed, surrounded by a gelatinous pulp. The West Indian damson plum has small fruit, and is chiefly found in the woods. The milky juice of the star apple, both of the tree and the fruit, before it is ripe is remarkably astringent; but, when the fruit ripens, it is sweet and very agreeable to the taste (1).

Sometimes, I take myself to be an explorer in an unknown land.



(1) E. Lankester, C. Knight, and W. Clowes, A Description and History of Vegetable Substances Used in the Arts, and in Domestic Economy, ed. 2, 1830

Ananas Rouge 2

Apparently, M. has a peculiar method of selecting pineapples. Whereas some shoppers may avoid such fruit, taking the double crown as a sign of poor health, or worse, some form of carcinogenic mutation, M. happily brings it home for our own consumption.

Ananas Rouge

One of the upsides of moving to Guadeloupe is the availability of tropical fruits: pineapples, passion fruit, guavas, etc. Of course, all of these fruits are available at certain markets and stores in New York. But being 'exotic,' they're usually available only certain times of year, and are quite expensive. 'Exotic' is relative, of course. Exotic fruits in Guadeloupe are raspberries, apples, figs. These come shipped in from France and Europe, and the prices reflect the distance traveled. So we eat local, happily.

Above, an ananas rouge that we bought last week. Then, the skin was still dark red, almost purple. You can't tell, since there is no reference, but its a large pineapple. And one with a funny haircut. We cut it up today for lunch. It was delish.

A great dessert that we had first at Les Cocotiers, an excellent restaurant in our neighborhood, inspired a dessert that we make at home whenever we have pineapple: Coconut ice cream served with fresh pineapples, doused with a tablespoon of aged rum. Its an incredibly simple recipe (at least, once you've got the pineapple cut up into pieces...), but just perfect in every way. The coconut ice cream is usually a little too sweet by itself, so the acidity of the pineapple and the alcohol of the rum balance it out. We use the bottle of Brugel that we brought back from our trip to the Dominican Republic, which, M. discovered, is not so great by itself. For guests, we might add some whipped cream and some toasted slivered almonds.