System Re-Boot

Usually after a period of rich foods and just general gluttony, my body feels really sluggish. I feel sluggish. Energy levels dip, patience levels dip, mood levels swing… and I just feel… well, you know… blaaaahhh… And I’ve been feeling like that since Chinese New Year, what with multiple BIG meals each day, every day for two weeks! Plus all those cookies, cakes and sweets. Acck! My poor body!

So this week, I decided it was time for a system reboot!

I really enjoy fruits – almost all kinds of fruits. But, for some reason or another, I seem to have great affinity for orange and yellow colored fruits. (Hmmm… what does that say about me? Anyone know anything about color psychology? ) Whenever my body is in need of a “detox”, suddenly all it wants to eat is fruits, fruits and more fruits. I’m not really into juicing. I feel intense pleasure biting into a succulent, juicy, sweet, luscious piece of fruit, and feeling the sweet nectar explode in my mouth. I love savoring the different textures and the different notes of taste, flavor and sweetness. Ah! Pretty close to heaven!

So, in the good wholesome tradition of the Sound of Music , here are a few of my favorite fruits…

My all time favorite: papaya! But not just any papaya though. I only like the Hawaiian paw paw, or variations thereof. Yes, I know, I’m fussy.

The Hawaiian paw paw is easily the sweetest, juiciest papaya I know of. The flesh is very smooth and refined, and not fibrous as our local papayas (those big elongated ones) tend to be. We can’t get Hawaiian paw paw in Singapore, but the small papayas that we get from Solo, Indonesia (usually) and occasionally from Taiwan are quite similar and are very good too. The slightly mango-shaped one I had this morning for breakfast (above) was soooo sweet and juicy! The Solo papayas are almost a bright orangey red compared to the lighter bright orange of the Hawaiian paw paw. Their flesh is slightly less refined (and occasionally rather fibrous) compared to their Hawaiian cousins. But hey, they make my day. Waking up to a piece of this fruit always brings a smile to my face. My difficulty is in restraining myself, trying not to eat too much and not to eat it everyday… the skin turns yellow from the excess beta-carotene.

I have only one gripe about buying fruits in Singapore. All our fruits are imported, and a lot of them have to travel literally thousands and thousands of miles to get here. This means we never get tree-ripened fruits. They are all picked while still far from ready, and are allowed to ripen on their long journey over here, or to ripen only a few days after they come home to my kitchen. Sure, some fruits still manage to ripen fairly well under such conditions, but there is still a big difference between these and tree-ripened fruits.

But I’m nit-picking here. I truly think we are so very fortunate living in Singapore. We are so blessed to have a HUGE variety of fruits available to us, from all corners of the globe and almost throughout the entire year. There is almost no seasonal restriction on us. In the middle of the year, we get summer fruits from the Northern Hemisphere… cherries, strawberries and all the other luscious summery fruits from Europe and the US. At the end of the year, we get the same fruits from Australia and New Zealand.

I think a lot of the times, Singaporeans take for granted the variety of foods we have. For mangoes alone, we get to choose from those that come from Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. On the supermarket shelves are persimmons from the US, Europe, China, Australia and Israel. We get to enjoy all the tropical fruits that our region has to offer, plus the full range of temperate fruits – year round – imported from Australia/New Zealand, and Europe, US and South America. These fruits are so commonplace in all the supermarkets (even the neighborhood ones) that their presence has become de facto and expected. What should be “exotic and foreign” fruits have become run-of-the-mill for us.

Speaking of persimmons… this is another one of my favorites! Yep, it’s orange too.

I only like the small Sharon persimmons from Israel. The tag line for them, as printed on their boxes, is: “the sweetest persimmon in the world”, and I’m inclined to agree. You will be hard pressed to find a bland, tasteless Sharon persimmon. Every single fruit is super sweet, lusciously succulent and oozing with juiciness, without (and this is important) the sappiness found in almost all Chinese and Australian persimmons. The latter ones, even when very ripe, leave a very uncomfortable gummy after-feel in the mouth that doesn’t go away readily. I’m not sure why this is so. The different growing conditions, maybe? The different soil, climate and growing procedures, maybe?

The Sharon persimmons are much smaller than the other persimmons, but they really pack a tasty and flavorful punch. These are wonderful not only for eating as is, but also in fruit salads and sometimes for baking too. I like to cut them down the cross section rather than down vertically, as this reveals a very pretty star- or flower-shaped pattern on the persimmon slice and makes for a rather nice presentation, I feel. The one I had this morning (please excuse the condensation on the fruit in the picture) had a pattern that looked more like a swaying coconut tree! The first time I had one like that. How nice!

I just bought another two boxes yesterday. Yes, the family likes them that much! I think they have two seasons a year – mid-year and year-end. The current season is probably reaching its tail-end, so we’re enjoying these whilst we can.

Another seasonal fruit that I like a lot. Honey kumquats. Available only during CNY, these honey kumquats are different from the sour ones that hang on the kumquat bushes we display in our homes during CNY. These tiny fruits (seen in picture being compared with the mini mandarin oranges) are sweet, slightly crunchy with a very unique and rather strong fragrance. We simply pop them into the mouth and eat them whole - skin and all. Except the pips of course. Although those are edible too, if you want (and if you are lazy ), just rather bitter.

According to our friendly fruit seller at the wet market, these are really good for helping with digestion and for the larynx. So, if you are wanting honeyed vocals, this is the fruit to get. They taste pretty good when made into a honey kumquat drink. Sooths and cools the throat.

I had been hoping to have some leftover from CNY to maybe bake a kumquat tart or a chocolate kumquat cake. I think that would be interesting. But no such luck. Next year, perhaps…

Of all the banana varieties we get, I like these the best. They are called “mi jiao” in Chinese. Not too sure what their Malay name is. These are tiny bananas – usually no more than 2-2½” (5-6cm) long, and at the very most 3” long. These are so very hard to find in Singapore, but abundant in Malaysia. I have only managed on occasions to get them from some of the fruit stalls that line the streets of Little India at night. They are different from the similar-sized but fatter “pang jiao” which can be easily found here. The texture and sweetness of the “mi jiao” are very unique. When ripe it still has a certain bite to it, and doesn’t become mushy like the pang jiao. Their sweetness is also more complex in tones than the pang jiao.

Come to think of it, we have quite an array of bananas, and I don’t even know the names of many of them. Of course, there are the more common ones like pisang mas (sometimes also called pisang emas i.e. golden banana). So called because of its sweet golden yellow flesh. Then there are the cooking bananas used in making the Asian fast-food “pisang goreng” (banana fritters). The most commonly used one being pisang raja (literally translated as “banana king). Others used in Asian cooking include pisang nangka and pisang nipah, among others. There are also the red bananas from Indonesia (don’t know their Malay name). And of course not forgetting the regular white-fleshed Cavendish bananas. Talk about going bananas over banana names!

Oh! Just remembered a yellow colored (okay, yellow-ish colored) fruit I really like but which is currently not in season… the golden kiwi. This is the one with the pointed, not rounded end. I much prefer this to the regular kiwi fruit. More times than not, the latter tends to be somewhat sour, while the golden kiwi is generally sweet. It’s a personal preference thing… I don’t like sour fruits of any sort.

Okay, enough of the orange and yellow fruits already! Here’s a nice blue colored one I picked up from the supermarket yesterday.

Berries are always rather expensive in Singapore. This small 150g punnet from Australia was S$4.50 (US$2.70) because it was on special offer at NTUC yesterday. Normally, this would be around S$7.00 to S$8.50 a punnet, which works out to a whopping S$56.00 (US$34.00) per kilo! But hey, they had to get on a plane to get here. I usually grab some when they go on offer, as I do like fresh blueberries so. This is probably the only berry I really like. I’m not much of a strawberry person even (shock! horror! but it’s true). Cherries I like, and like a lot. But they aren’t berries, are they?

Oh dear, I seem to have gone on a bit. I'm sure you can tell by now... I really like fruits! The list of my likes can go on forever... but I won’t.

Ah, fruits… the nectar of Nature that makes life so sweet!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All rights reserved.
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