Fruity Fridays - Sapodilla

This Friday's fruit: Sapodilla

Also known as: zapote, naseberry, chikoo, plus many others

Vietnamese name: hồng xiêm

Cost in the market outside my house: I think I paid about 20,000 dong for a kilo, but it was a while ago so I'm not sure!

Season in Northern Vietnam: I bought these in April when they seemed very plentiful, although I just read something that said sapodilla trees fruit all year, and I have seen some recently!

Interesting facts: This fruit and various part of the tree it grows on seems to be used in all kinds of ways to cure all kinds of ailments. Also, the tree produces a lot of latex, from which a lot of chewing gum is made. In India it's called chiku, which is how Chiclets got their name!

I bought them when they were quite hard, but left them out for a few days and they softened up pretty quickly.

When you cut them in half they have this brownish pulp inside, which has a slightly grainy texture a bit like a pear, and tastes sweet with a hint of brown sugary flavour.

It's pretty easy to eat, you can scoop out the insides like you might with a kiwi, but be careful of the big black seeds inside! Apparently sometimes they have a little hook on them, so if you accidentally swallow one it can get caught in your throat and become quite unpleasant.

I tried eating one of these fresh, and it was ok but honestly I wasn't a big fan of the taste or the texture. Somewhere I read that they're better cold, but I decided that instead of waiting for one to chill, I'd just bake with it.

I scooped out all of the insides....

....mashed it up....

...and used it in place of banana in my mom's amazing Banana Bread recipe.

It was a bit juicier than mashed banana, so this Sapodilla loaf was wonderfully moist and delicious! The only modification I made to the recipe was to add a tiny bit of ground cloves, because it seemed like they'd go well with the sapodilla's brown sugary flavour. And oh yes they did!

I'm sure there are plenty of other things you could make with sapodillas, and in fact FruitsInfo.com has a couple of yummy looking recipes for Sapodilla Souffle and Sapodilla Kulfi (Indian ice cream). It also suggests stewing them with lime juice and ginger (which I'm thinking would be great on vanilla ice cream), battering and frying them, or fermenting them to make wine. There's also a recipe floating around for Sapodilla Pie. It seems they can also easily be used in any recipe where you'd normally use apples or bananas, so go nuts!

Daring Bakers Challenge February 2012 - Mango & Coconut Loaf

In addition to taking part in Tina's Crazy Cooking Challenge I have also joined The Daring Kitchen's monthly Daring Baker challenge. It seems that in the past the challenges have been a fairly specific item to bake, but for my first one this month it was quickbreads! The rules: no yeast, only loaves/muffins/popovers, and can't take more than 1.5 hours to prepare and bake. Any flavour I want. Yum.

After some thought, I decided to do a mango - coconut loaf. These ingredients are available right outside my door, fresh and locally grown.

I began with my mom's banana bread recipe, which is moist and delicious, but I changed some things. Instead of using oil I substituted coconut cream, added lime juice, and obviously used mango instead of banana.

This loaf baked for a long time! It took 80 minutes for it to finally be cooked through, and when I took it out it immediately began to sink! I turned it upside down to try to prevent it, but that didn't work and it still shrank back down to a fairly low, dense cake.

This was delicious in flavour, but I didn't like the texture of it much. After it had shrank and cooled, it was a bit mushy inside, but the top was chewy. Another Daring Baker suggested that maybe I left the batter to sit too long before I baked it (I was busy pureeing the mango) so maybe next time I'll add a bit more baking soda and make sure I have everything ready to go!

Of course, as usual, I took it to work and nobody there was as critical of my work as I am! I love that no matter how bad my failures are, I know they'll still eat it!

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

Mango-Coconut Loaf

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

½ cup coconut cream

1 1/3 c flour

1 1/3 tsp baking soda (try adding a bit more)

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ground ginger

1 cup mango puree

½ cup diced mango

¾ cup (loose) shredded coconut (fresh from the market in big shreds – thin stuff from a store might need less)

2 tbsp lime juice

Pre-heat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a loaf pan. Beat sugar and eggs until creamy. Mix in coconut cream. Sift dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Add mango puree, diced mango, coconut, and lime juice. Mix and bake for 80 mins. (I would check it after 60)

This challenge was fun and I wish I'd had time to try this again (I will, eventually) and I'm very impressed by everyone else's creativity. There are SO many flavours to try, both savoury and sweet. If only I had time to stay home and try making all of them!