Fat Pork Jam

It has been a fruitful holiday. We have been stuffing our faces with mangoes, West Indian cherries, yellow plums, and guavas. Wars are being fought over the few remaining sugar apples. 

One  uncommon fruit which we found on a drive through the country side was fat pork.  Bite into it and the unusual texture of it's interior, white pulp will clue you in as to the name. The taste is insipid and to be honest it doesn't inspire a second bite. It looks it but doesn't taste like pork fat. The weird, floury texture is only very mildly sweet with a flavour that is barely detectable. The rest of the Caribbean calls these fruit cocoplums. It is something that I remember foraging as a child, although now I cannot for the life of me remember why! 

Foraging, apparently it's a thing. Back when I was a child. It didn't have a name. It was just something we did. Mom and Dad you might want to look away for this part. Sampling little bits of wild, edible, plants and their fruits was a childhood game which was meant to gross out friends. 

Does anyone remember eating the transparent seed coat of the Pride of Barbados seeds? We called it Dead Man's flesh. Yum. There is that 'ick' factor that's so gosh darn appealing to kids~ especially boys.  Reportedly, all parts of the Pride of Barbados plant are toxic but we didn't know that as children. It's a wonder any of us survived childhood! How about sucking the nectar out of the Ixora flowers or eating 'cheese' (pollen) from the stamen of hibiscus flowers? So tell me are there any strange things which you ate as a child that have you questioning your sanity today?

Back to present day and the point of me buying a large quantity of a fruit that my son says tastes like mashed potatoes. 

He is not wrong.

I don't much care for it myself but I had heard that one could use this fruit to make jam. 

How was it? Well, we all liked it. While not likely to replace our all time favourite strawberry or guava jams, it was pretty decent jam.  I would describe it as having a mild rose flavour with slightly woodsy notes.  Part of me wants to call this by its other name and say cocoplum jelly. That sounds a lot more sophisticated and grown up, doesn't it? However the kid in me...

I can't help myself - the shock factor of offering someone a spoonful of Fat Pork Jam is proving to be just too irresistible. 

Fat Pork Jam

(yield about 1 cup)

*No actual pigs were harmed in the making of this jam.

Ingredients

75 fat pork (cocoplums)

2 tsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 cup sugar

Method

Put the fat pork into into a deep pot filled with water ~ just enough to cover the plums. Boil for about 3 mins. . After allowing it to cool, use clean hands  to smash the fruit and remove the seeds. Pass the remaining pulp through a sieve removing the larger bits of pulp and skin. To this fruit sludge, add 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon and 1 cup of sugar. Cook until jam is set. Click here for useful tips for knowing when your jam is ready 

Candied Golden Limes ~ What to do with Calamansi?

So it might be that lately I am a little, just a teeny, tiny bit, obsessed with calamondins which are also known as calamansi. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they are a relatively unknown local fruit. Truly, I feel like the fruit version of a modern day orchid hunter when I rediscover some hitherto unknown or fallen out of favour produce. Some of you might remember me getting a wee bit crazy over rumberries, and then again with purslane?

I have had my eye on this fruit for a couple of years and have been wanting to blog about it for the longest while. 

Rather surprisingly, I did not find this in a some remote country district but in a suburb of the capital city where it was being grown as an ornamental by an elderly, Chinese, gentleman. The small tree is quite beautiful when laden down with orange fruit which are about the size of limes. They have an intense, fragrant smell-like Portugals (tangerines) but don't be fooled by the heady aroma. Bite into one and you will be in for a screwed up, sour faced surprise........ugh they are so very sour! Yet, if you know what to do with them, they can be utterly delightful.

Camalodins or calamansi are also known as Chinese oranges or golden limes. The fruit starts off green, then turns yellow and finally orange. It can be used when green since it is just as sour green as it is in its orange state. The fruit is thought to have originated in China and is most likely the result of a cross between a kumquat and a mandarin. It is grown here mainly as an ornamental but not much is done with the fruit outside of using it to season fish. It is quite popular in the Phillipines where it is used commercially in juices and marmalade. 

Now can we talk about breakfast? More importantly, can we discuss how these darling, candied limes have turned my boring, healthy, yoghurt and oatmeal breakfasts into desserts? 

Yum, I love the idea of dessert for breakfast, don't you? 

Candied Calamansi 

Ingredients

1 lb calamansi

1 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Method

Lay some waxed or parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle about 1/2 cup granulated sugar on the paper. 

Slice calamansi into thin rounds and remove the seeds. Combine sugar and water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir a few minutes until the sugar is completely dissolved and syrupy. 

Add the calamansi slices and cook until they are translucent. Drain the rinds and lay on the sugared, parchment paper to dry. Let dry overnight or a couple of days. Store in an airtight container.

WARNING: Usually I end a recipe with a cook's tip. This time around I think it more appropriate to end with a warning.  I strongly advise that you do not under for any reason dip these in chocolate! Trust me on this. I am not to be held responsible if you ignore this warning and end up consuming a pound of chocolate covered calamansi in one sitting. Yeah, it.....uhmmmm......has been known to happen.....just saying.

Mystery Fruit

Don't be fooled by it's boring brown exterior. This fruit is amazing! Do you know what it is? Click here or on my fan page button to play along. The idea for this came from blogger Caribbean Pot. Check out his lovely blog here, then head on over to his fan page to see some other uncommon Caribbean fruits.

Rumberry Pie (Chasing Guavaberries in Tortola)

True story:

By own admission, my curiosity about food is at times an embarrassment to my loved ones. On this occasion they were encapsulated in a rental jeep at the bottom of a hill, looking for all the world like they were ordinary tourists with their cameras trained on the beautiful vista ahead. Their goal was to casually disassociate themselves from the crazy, inappropriately attired lady, hiking up a small hill behind them.

It was Christmas and I was vacationing with my sister in Tortola. One taste of an intoxicating, local, drink and I had become a woman on a mission. What was this magic elixir? The homebrew I had tasted was called guavaberry wine and it was made with a fruit that I hadn’t heard of before. Later on I learned that a delicious pie and a liqueur (pictured above) were also made from the same berries.

What are guavaberries? First off, they don’t taste anything like a guava. The berry itself is yellowish-orange or a very dark red to a blackish purple. They are also known as rumberries in some parts. My apologies for the crappy, blurred photo it was dark in the freezer and I couldn't get my old point and shoot to focus. I had already weirded out my hostess enough. I didn’t reckon she would have taken too kindly to my hauling out her berries and attempting to style the shot.Click here for a picture of the tree and clearer image of the fruit.

I am thinking that this might be something that grows in Trinidad but we may have a different name for it. So many of our local fruits have been forgotten in our pursuit of foreign imports. Have you seen this fruit? Do you know it by some other name? Please let me know in the comments.

The time that I was in Tortola, I drove my sister crazy looking for this darn tree. Guavaberry pie and wine evokes such a sense of nostalgia in Virgin Islanders that you would think there would be a guavaberry tree on display in the botanical gardens, but no. We climbed the highest peak in the Virgin Islands to get to Sage Mountain National Park – don’t bother.

We asked every tour operator we encountered to help us locate a guavaberry tree. Most didn't know or so they pretended:-) FINALLY on the last day of our stay, as we were leaving the beach, I struck up a conversation with some taxi drivers who were setting up for a barbecue. They didn't know where I could find a guavaberry tree but they knew a woman who made guavaberry pies - just up the hill.

Before I knew it I was standing, slightly embarrassed, trailing sand and dripping salt water into this woman’s immaculate kitchen. My sense of shame was heightened by the fact once I opened my mouth, I knew that my Caribbean accent would expose me as an imposter, not a tourist – well not really.

Sure enough, when I started speaking they realized right way that I was myself an islander. Now the strange looks. How could I be West Indian and not know about guavaberry? I know isn’t it shameful. That’s exactly why I am here peering into the depths of your freezer. Nervous laughter. Not only did this kind lady open up her freezer for me to take pictures, she also cut me a generous slice of her pie. Score! You gotta love Caribbean hospitality!

Upon my return, my sister and husband were annoyed because my diversion had made us late to catch our flight home - no matter I had pie!

Here is a picture of a guavaberry pie that my sister was supposed to bring for me this Christmas. Sigh, all I got for Christmas was my sister. She forgot the pie but so thoughtfully took this picture before she and her roommate ate it all.

There is a lesson here. The lesson is that fancy ingredients do not necessarily come from far flung corners of the earth. You can bring something exciting to your table wherever you are in the world with local ingredients. You just have to ask questions. Oh yeah,  and NEVAH trust your sister with pie!