Cherimoyas and White Sapotes

I was emailing Fatemeh of Gastronomie about two of my favorite fruits and thought I should post it in case anyone else has wondered about these.

Around here cherimoyas are fairly expensive, from $2.75 to $4 a pound. They have to be hand-pollinated - that is why they are costly. They taste delicious (I believe Mark Twain said "like deliciousness itself") but have lots of big black seeds that are pretty easy to remove, but are all throughout the fruit - one in each of those scaly little sections.

I like sapotes because they have the same sort of creamy delicious flesh as cherimoyas and they only have seeds in the middle - usually one or two big and one or two small flat ones. The big seeds are really big, though, so buy the biggest sapotes you can find (if you can find them at all).

Here sapotes are only about $1 a pound in high season but are only sold at Farmer's Markets, not in stores, and here is why: they sit around hard and green forever. Then they go from ripe to overripe in about a day. One moment they are perfect and the next they are rotten. So you have to watch them carefully!

That is my rare fruit lesson for the day. For more fruit facts, check out The Evil Fruit Lord's blog The Fruit Blog . He gladly answers fruit-related questions.