New Fruits

Since my husband and I have been in Jamaica, we've had the opportunity to try lots of fantastic new foods!  Here's a list fruits we were introduced to on this trip:

• Ackee
• Sour Sop (as juice)
• June Plum (as juice)
• Breadfruit
• Coconut water with jelly (the coconuts here are different than the kind we get in NY, I think those are imported from Thailand) 
• Sorrel (in a drink)

I've already written about Ackee, which tastes like cheese or egg (my husband thought our Ackee dish was was egg and cheese).

The Sour Sop Juice was from a grocery store, and it was so highly sweetened it was hard to tell what the fruit flavor alone was (there was also lime juice added).  It was a bit like lemonade with a slightly different tang. If I go into town again, I might try to buy a fresh sour sop just to try it fresh and unadulterated.  (And yes, that is a rainbow in the background of the photo above.)

I had June Plum juice at breakfast one day, which slightly reminded me of lemonade, but with a vague shiso-leaf-esque flavor that made it more refreshing. 

Breadfruit was served sliced into a cube, and it tasted like a slightly dry, more dense, and highly refined cube of Wonder (white) bread.

The Coconut Water and Jelly is similar to the Thai coconut, except it is not as sweet, and the meat (the jelly) is much lighter.

Sorrel is delicious in a drink, I had it as a sort of iced tea (it looks and tastes similar to hibiscus, which it is related to).  It is a bright red tangy drink, sweetened with sugar.  My husband has had a Sorrel cocktail every night we've been at this hotel!  Here's the hotel's recipe (in case you can't see the photo above):

Sorrel Daiquiri
2 oz Light Rum
1/2 oz lime juice
3 oz Sorrel Juice  

You can add ginger to make it taste even more Jamaican!

    

Jamiacan Me Wannabegan!

Hello from beautiful Jamaica! 

We got in on Tuesday, that day was a bit of a wash with all the travel, but Wednesday and today have been non stop fun!   

The first night we were super tired, so for dinner I ordered "Rasta Pasta" from the hotel restaurant, which seemed like a pretty standard dish: pasta and some vegetables. But there was something totally unfamiliar in the pasta, it looked like small dumplings, but tasted a bit like cheese and had almost the same consistency.  I thought it was mysterious, but great!  I ate every last bit and made a note to take a closer look at the menu the next day to see what it was.

The next morning at breakfast, my husband and I sat with a Jamaican native and he ordered a dish that looked like scrambled eggs and vegetables.  My husband ordered the same thing, and it turns out the dish had no eggs whatsoever, is actually a fruit called ackee.  And that's exactly the same thing that was in my pasta the previous night! 

I had never heard heard of this fruit before, and I asked some locals why.  It turns out, if ackee is harvested too early, it can be poisonous, so it was banned in the United States for a while.  If harvested properly, it is DELICIOUS!!  I am amazed that there isn't a huge ackee vegan cheese/egg replacement industry in the United States, because it would be a huge success! 

(photo: UNRIPE ackee growing on a tree in our villa grounds.  Don't eat it in this state, you have to wait for it to open like a flower before harvesting the edible part.)