New-found foods in Africa, continued...
Meet passion fruit: Locals call it granadilla. Though three different varieties of passion fruit exist in tropical places throughout the world, here purple passion fruit grows abundantly. The fruit in the store often looks greener and smoother; as it ripens it becomes more wrinkly and turns to a darker purple. Jonas' feet (below) will give you a terrible sense of scale, since this two year old is wearing shoes big enough for most five year olds.
Passion fruit is the size of a petite lemon or lime. Though also a citris fruit, it is less potent on the palate than grapefruit or lemon. Its slight tartness makes it rarely eaten plain; it is either eaten with a sprinkle of sugar, or much more often, found in baked goods. There are a number of other ways one can find passion fruit... jams, liquor, juice (the only way I've had it previously), and syrup are all attainable here.
Here is the inside of the granadilla... pulp with crunchy seeds in the middle.
The seeds do not bake down, so they leave a crunchy reminder of the fruit in every baked good... kind of like poppy seeds, only much much larger!
Here I have pulled the pulp out to show the empty shell... The empty shells have the same texture and pliability as an avocado skin.
Jonas and I made granadilla muffins (not as pretty as an actual food blog picture, but we have yet to receive our muffin tin here). They were a little tart and lumpy so we learned not to skimp on the sugar, but definitely to mash up the fruit before putting it in the batter.
Today Jonas and I made a staple, banana bread with our old black mushy bananas, but put in three granadillas for a new twist. It was delicious! If you are tired of the same old banana bread, we highly recommend you give it a try:
- 3 ripe bananas, smashed
- 3 granadillas, smashed
- 1/3 cup melted butter
- 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
METHOD
No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.
