Simplicity Coimbatore , have you tried the nutrient rich egg fruit ?
It was about 3 years ago when a fellow food enthusiast and loyal reader (Sanjana) had something very interesting to share with me. Her ancestral farm was getting a bit of a clean up and the family were planning to plant some new saplings in place of an older tree which no one knew the name of.
The tree bore yellow fruit which was edible. In fact,she had eaten it several times but had no idea what it was called.So when the decision needed to be made to remove this tree,I received a SOS of sorts. “Please could you tell me what this fruit is called?” At first the picture was shared .A little later in the day a few fruits were sent home. While the exterior did closely resemble the shape of a persimmon, the texture of the pulp was vastly different from any of the yellow fruit we had eaten thus far. We went through all the names we knew; nectarine,peach,apricot ,anything which fell into the same colour chart.
A couple of days of intense searching through the list of yellow fruit on the internet and we literally stumbled upon the picture of what was known as the “canistel”. The image and description was a perfect match to ‘our yellow fruit’. The more colloquial name for the canistel is egg fruit. The inside of the fruit when fully ripe has the texture of a hard boiled egg. While a few of the fruits have a creamy texture, most do not. It has a fruity fragrance and tastes sweet.
Interestingly the canistel belongs to the sapotaceae family , similar to the sapota.The leaves have the same distinct shape and the bark oozes a milky sap. The egg fruit is supposedly high in Thiamine (B1) Riboflavin (B2), Niacin (B3) and Vitamins A and C . Per 100 grams of fruit has a high content of phosphorus,followed by calcium and then iron. It is recommended to take a tall glass of egg fruit juice to ward off a summer cold.
Owing to the mild flavour of the egg fruit ,it balances the tart flavour of the lemon very well. So a savoury juice would be just egg fruit, water, salt and a spritz of lemon. While it is a tree which is cultivated widely in Brazil , Costa Rica, USA and Australia it is also known to grow in Thailand, Indonesia, SriLanka , Phillipines and India.
Despite research showing that it did grown in India, I only knew of 2 home gardens here in Coimbatore which had the egg fruit tree. Kitchen garden enthusiasts who I spoke to in other cities hadn’t heard of it. I discovered the other one in another friend’s house fairly recently. We heard that a nursery in Annaikatti had saplings but did not know if the fruit was commercially available anywhere. Hence it made little sense to draw our local readers’ attention to this unusual fruit.
All that changed when ,a little over a week ago,I walked into the recently set up Wild Earth Foods store at Saibaba Colony and straight away spotted a large quantity of egg fruit placed on the refrigerated shelves. My initial surprise of finding this fruit deepened further when the staff there displayed more than adequate knowledge about the fruit. Apparently they do get a weekly supply from a local farm.
So we brought some back home with us ,a few ripe ones and some unripe.I remembered Sanjana mentioning that she liked making a smoothie out of it and that it also tasted good in cheesecakes. On looking up some egg fruit recipes,we discovered that this ingredient is used to mimic the qualities of the egg in many ways. A vegetarian custard or an egg nog are made by pairing the egg fruit with milk or cream. A vegan version is made using soy milk or coconut milk.
When blended with a creamier element, it makes for a great milkshake. It looks like a sweet version of a thick pumpkin soup.So that’s the thought process which made me add some cinnamon powder , maple syrup and a little cold milk to the egg fruit pulp. It’s a much tastier way to enjoy the egg fruit than to just eat the pulp on it’s own. I’d say this is great news for vegetarians especially but also for everyone else looking to make healthier versions of a creamy drink, custard, frosting or even an ice-cream or sorbet.
With such a wide and varied selection of fruits growing around us, why limit ourselves to an apple a day !?
INFO
No.5, Ragupathy Layout,
1st Cross,
Saibaba Colony,
Coimbatore – 641 011.
Contact number : 98431 21514
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