Interesting Fruit in season?

I will be in Kauai later this week - I read a post about white pineapples and am curious as to how this would taste. Anyone know if this white pineapple is still in season at the farmers markets and also any other interesting fruit I should try out? Thanks! :)

Interesting Fruit in season?

You MUST try ripe star fruit. Look for the ones that are yellow-gold all over, although they may have thin green strips down each ';point.'; They%26#39;re citrusy with a hint of something floral. Eat them whole or cut into stars. Beware the juice though - it stains. Permanently.

Interesting Fruit in season?

Yum! I can%26#39;t wait for the new fruits to try!

3 more days!!!!!!!!

Bonnie

Went to South shore Saturday stopped at a farmers market...

Sugar Apples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar-apple! They sort of look like Noni. Break open eat the flesh around the seeds spit seeds. Yummy. Very interesting, they do taste like a very sugary soft apple.

Oh... Longons... If you can get them right off the tree... They taste like raw fresh sweet corn... definitely interesting. (they look like eyeballs) I liked them fresh best.

If you can find a red orange they are good. Inside texture is sort of like a grapefruit, but they are so much sweeter. (No they are not blood oranges.)

Aloha from Kaua%26#39;i!

I saw dragon fruit at Sueoka%26#39;s last week - pretty hard to find - it must be in season! Bright pink and very unusual!

Avocados are also going off.

I have no clue about the white pineapple, never had it!

Malama Pono,

Janet

We%26#39;ve been getting superb, island-grown yellow pineapples at Costco. Cheap, too.

Lychees, lychees, lychees the absolute best, most desirable local fruit in my opinion, and they are getting more difficult to find every year. It is the absolute fruit of the Gods.

It used to be every fanily planted a lychee along wiht their mangoes, and both would be bearing from late spring throught the summer to the joy of the whole community, Unfortunately many of the trres have grown old and/or been replaced by development during the past 20 year...and while numerous mangoes have survived or been replacted, lychees have been less fortunate. And because they are in high demand, most productive lychees have their crops tied up by picking businesses and never get to local store shelves.

My frined has two excellent bearing lychees at his home on the Kahala slopes of Diamond Head, The local kids strip the trees of fruit below about the eight foot level (as high up as they can reach up from their bikes), and a broker comes in and harvests the rest for a pretty penney and a few bags for us.

The fruitation generally runs in two cycles May/June and September.

Not to be missed, they were the fruit of the royal family in China. They have a thin hard crust/shell over a delectible sweet, soft white inerior containing elongated slippery seeds. The interior is somewhat similar in appearance and taste to a locuat.

A true delicacy not to be missed if yoy can find it at a farmers market, roadside stand or health food store. So valuable most are sold to local chefs or to overseas buyers.

The goal on your trek should be to score the ';Big Four';: a perect Papaya (or two including a Kapoho Sunrise); a perfect mango; succlent avocado from one of the 14 types grown in the islands; and, the irresistable lychee.

Star fruit, Mountain Apple and Guava are all best when picked freshly ripe along trails in windward vally; all having unique delectible tastes, but lacking in comparison to the big four (papaya, mango, avos and lychee).

Aloha from Kaua%26#39;i!

Haven%26#39;t seen a lychee here for at least a month - I know that the trees at my place were pau by the end of July, first part of August. The last couple of farmer%26#39;s markets I went to didn%26#39;t have any either.

Malama Pono,

Janet

I actually like longons better than lychee, and you can still get them at the farmers markets. Avocados are readily available and, of course, apple and ladyfinger bananas.

No one answered the original poster: they taste pretty much like yellow pineapples, not much of a novelty. A lot of vendors at the farmer%26#39;s markets sell what they call ';low-acid'; which takes a bit of the harshness off the pineapple and a bit of that raspy feeling in the back of your throat (which I believe is actually a mild and harmless allergy of sorts--some people get that from cantaloupe).

Star fruit are abundant several times a year and often found at the market. The skin can be a bit tough so cut off the ends and slice the edge of each ridge (the points of the star) to remove the thickest parts.

With all due respects to amberloo, ';big four'; is Oahu thinking (reminds me of the ';Big 5'; landowners that controlled most of the ';Big 3'; islands, ie not Kauai so much). We have all that and more, especially now that a lot of little farmers are looking for novelty crops.

Longan literally means ';dragon-eye'; in Chinese, or so I%26#39;ve been told. Lychee must be in the same family but more tart and more perfumed. Tons of both at the farmer%26#39;s market in season, and often for sale by the side of the road, but never cheap ($3-5/pound). I believe the lychee does not fruit abundantly every year, so not always as available. Oh yes, and how can I forget rambutan--there are entire threads here devoted to them so just go searching.

Kudos to VintageChick for mentioning the sugar-apple, though NOTHING looks or smells like a noni in my mind. In the same family as the sugar apple there are the aptly named sour-sop (sometimes better pressed as a juice) and my favorite the Cherimoya. It has a smooth texture and a perfumed flavor, even Mark Twain liked it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherimoya). Then there is the jackfruit, the huge spiky fruit that grows up to 30 lbs--either you love it or you hate it. When just right, it tastes like Juicy Fruit gum, and is excellent dehydrated at home (and when boiled, the seeds taste like chestnuts).

Another family of fruit includes the egg-fruit (color, texture, and flavor of a sweet, hard-boiled egg yolk), the cream-apple (purple and white and creamy inside, with seeds surrounded by white jelly), and the chico (tastes like cinnamon and apple). The chico is actually the fruit of the chicle tree, the original, natural chewing gum, and sometimes you can find some of the chewy white sap next to the hard seeds. All of these have the particularity of being very unpleasantly bitter and sticky if not ripe enough: egg fruit must be soft like an avocado, cream-apple and chico even softer.

Then there are lilikoi (passion fruit), though usually only the yellow kind at the market (the velvety orange kind is like the guava, mostly found on trails). They can be very sour, but go well in papayas instead of squeezing a lime. You can eat the pulp and crunchy seeds (supposed to have some good kind of oil in them) or put them into a strainer to get the juice out and make ';lemonade'; from them.

Oh, and avocados are a fruit and can be eaten with sugar, just ask a Brazilian. We%26#39;ve made some mighty tasty avocado ice cream with coconut milk and brown sugar--and sprinkled with crushed cashews.

Your best bet for all of these is probably the Kapaa farmer%26#39;s market. It%26#39;s popular and crowded for a reason. At the far end, away from the main parking, on the left side (makai) there is one vendor, a lady at a long table, who has many of the exotic and uncommon fruit, but many vendors have one or two varieties from trees in their yard. The problem is that many of these are delicate fruit, and so it%26#39;s hard to get good ones that ripened just right.

The white pineapple are Sugarloaf pineapples, a high sugar, no acid pineapple with no hard core like a regular pineapple. They are a bit of a novelty, grown more commonly in South America. It%26#39;s not grown by the big guys. If you find it, it%26#39;ll likely be at a farmer%26#39;s market.

Pineapple has no ';season,'; it grows year round.

And, yes, dragon fruit is in season right now. They even have it at Safeway right now.

If you want papaya, please come and take some of mine. I%26#39;m having a bumper crop and we are sick of them. Kaikane wants to cut the trees down for next year but they just keep bearing fruit. Had a so-so mango year, but our bananas and papaya just gone lolo on us.