Getting Fruity

There has been a lot of anticipation in the air lately. Part of it is the weather- this is the hot-before-the-rains season. So the entire season is really building up to the monsoon, and it is getting really really hot. Every now and then we get a little release with a rainstorm (we got a huge storm last night, for example) but generally there is really a sense of building up in the air.

In addition, we have been waiting to hear about a grant proposal Sam submitted to stay for an extra five months and we just finally heard that she got the grant. Hooray! So now we know that we will be staying until December 15, 2010 instead of leaving in July. We are happy to have the grant and looking forward to the added time we get to live here.

The other reason there has been anticipation in the air is that we are now beginning to get a glimpse of the wonderful fruit season ahead. It is a little early in the season, but everywhere you look there is fruit growing. Some fruits have come already - such as mountains of delicious fresh watermelons on every corner – but a lot of the fruits are hanging tantalizingly above our very heads. Here are some of the bountiful watermelon displays. What a treat to have fresh, ripe watermelon in the middle of April!

There are fruit trees all over, so if you look around you can see mangoes, papayas, bananas, and of course, the national fruit of Bangladesh, the jackfruit, growing everywhere. The jackfruit is a strange thing. It is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world - and pretty freaky, frankly. The gigantic bulbous fruit grows off the trunk of the tree, rather than the branches, which is just odd looking and makes the tree look like it has a problem, rather than a fruit. For the most part, they aren’t fully grown yet, but they are still fairly big right now and growing everywhere. You can cook them at this stage with vegetables, which Taborok swears is delicious, but Sam isn’t interested. She is not a fan of jackfruit at all, and generally avoids it all costs. Here are some pictures of the fruit growing and one of Jon for scale.

Bananas are always available and always delicious here, but we thought we’d include some pictures just to add to the fruity picture collection. Here are some growing overhead and some waiting to be purchased at the market. Notice the size and shape are smaller than typical American bananas. This is something of a sensitive subject… Many Bangladeshis feel like they need to point out that the little bananas are better and sweeter, and that the bigger bananas are foreign and not delicious. Taborok used to give Sam so much crap when she bought the big bananas that she just started buying the small ones to get him to shut up about it! The small ones are fine, but a little small, and our foreign palattes don’t mind the slightly less sweet bigger ones anyhow. All in all we usually end up with the little ones both to support buying as locally as possible and to avoid the lengthy conversation about bananas that comes with buying the bigger ones.

Also available often but growing in abundance right now is papaya. None of the three of us like it either, and ever since our fried D.P. pointed out that since they share a similar compound as stomach acid they kind of taste like vomit, none of us have been able to eat it at all. Thanks DP.
As many readers may know, as much as Sam dislikes jackfruit and papaya, she loves mangoes like there is no tomorrow. Very few things can make her as happy as a plate of fresh ripe mango from Bangladesh. She has always arrived toward the end of mango season and usually only gets about a month worth of perfectly ripe and wonderful mango, and this year she completely missed it, so the anticipation has been long brewing. Everywhere we look, are little green mangoes growing on the trees. Some people have even set nets up to catch them and fences to protect them:

In fact, just the other day Jon was talking about the mangoes with Taborok and Taborok was saying that the green mangoes are tasty with a little salt. ‘Oh really?’ said Jon. We’d never heard of eating green mangoes. So Taborok pops open the storage area under the seat of his rickshaw and hands Jon one of the many green mangoes he had apparently collected up. (I guess we know why people need the nets and fences…. Although in his defense, he collects them up to bring home for Ranu his wife, who really likes them – which is just really sweet.)

We sliced that sucker up and it was DELICIOUS! It was sort of like a really tart green apple, so with a little salt it was great. Sam still loves ripe mango the most, but green mangoes are now one of her favorite things too. The mangoes on public trees are ambiguous in ownership, so as Sam pointed out, if Jon really loved her he would bring her mangoes home that he collected up over the day (thanks for introducing that one Taborok). Well Jon has been eyeing several mango jackpots around the neighborhood, but usually folks are watching them and have cultivation formalized. Here is a guy with what we call the mango-getter. It is a knife on a stick basically, but it seems to work surprisingly efficiently and well.

The down side to green mangoes, as with ripe ones, is that cutting them is a pain in the neck. Green mangoes are more easy to handle than their slippery ripe counterparts, but there is still a weird pit area that you have to slice the flesh off, and it is just difficult to tell where to cut exactly. Maybe we’ll get better with practice, but by then the season will be over! If you are able to get a hold of green mangoes in your part of the world, here is a photo demonstration of cutting them (for some reason).

Well, you didn't even notice it but we tricked you into reading part three of the 400,000 part series of food entries, so Ha Haa! We hope you've enjoyed it. Expect even more fruity entries once the real fruit season arrives!