Strange Fruits, Part 1: Custard-apple, Argan and Cactus Fig

Ferenc and István have always tried to eat local and seasonal food along their walk. Usually they eat what the locals eat. If it’s octopus than octopus, if camel meat than camel meat. Of course that’s the cheapest way to live as well, eat what nature gives at a given time.

The seasonality affects mostly fruits and vegetables, and man, they have tasted many strange things during the last year. And things tend to get stranger as they get farther from home. We start a series of posts about the weird fruits they tried.

by FERENC IVANICS

Custard-apple or Chirimoya

Custard-apple is a fruit of a semi-evergreen tree that prefers a warm and humid climate. But we first saw the fruit without the tree in a grocery store. We tried it, and immediately threw it away; it was crap, a ball with huge stones and without any flavor at all.


But later we discovered (when we were spending the night camping in a chirimoya plantation), that it’s bad only while it’s firm and hard. Probably the piece we had bought was unripe. When it gets soft, even the transformation of the ugliest caterpillar to the most beautiful butterfly is incomparable to its metamorphosis. The bitter vegetable that tastes like flour turns into a luscious fruit full of heavenly tropical aromas. When it falls off the tree it’s not fully ripe yet, you have to wait a day or two patiently ’til it grows perfect. Thank you almighty or evolution (delete whichever does not apply :) for giving us this wonder.

Argan

We saw the argan trees first on our maps. They were dense green patches near Agadir, Morocco. We thought that we would have a nice walk in some cool, shadowy groves; well, not exactly. Those argan patches look 100% authentic “African style” when you see them. You feel the desert is close just by looking at them. This is the odd-fruit-out of the post, since the flesh of the actual fruit is extremely bitter and sticky. When I tried it I couldn’t help spitting it out and hoping that it wasn’t poisonous. :)


But its stone contains an oil highly valued (and priced) by the cosmetics industry. It’s also edible and is quite delicious (we tried it by courtesy of a bartender). Its uses are more or less like olive oil’s. The roasted and ground seed by-product is used in households as a flour substitute.


Other things grow on argan trees as well: goats! :) We were told by locals that someone had hybridized the argan tree and goats. The seeds take ten years to germinate and the trees begin fruiting in another seven years. Then you can harvest tons of bleating goats every year. The story was more than suspicious but then one day we saw a hybrid argan tree full of “fruits”.

Cactus Fig or Tuna

This strange phenomenon is the fruit of the Opuntia cacti, which are widely spread in the world; they are the most cold tolerant cacti around. Its season was in July in Morocco, they sold a pound for a buck or so. On the outside it’s yellowish-green and is fully covered with thin, hair-like spines that easily penetrate skin, detach from the plant and cause irritation. So you can peel it with care or leave the task to the fruit seller, they do it happily for a small tip.


On the inside it’s full of small seeds surrounded by refreshing, juicy flesh. Somewhat reminded us to melons. They are also used to make candies and refreshing drinks.


Ferenc peeling a cactus fig on YouTube (Hungarian commentary)