One of the fun things about cruising is sampling the island’s local fare, and finding out if there are any island specialties. Sometimes, we'll get adventurous for ourselves and try to prepare them aboard, usually with some success. So, when we come across a fruit or a vegetable at the local market that we don’t recognize, we always ask what it is…and ask as many questions as we can about preparing it. I have an old Caribbean Cooking cookbook (copyright 1973!) which is a great resource, but we've found the best recipes by simply asking the person selling the vegetables!
Yard-long beans, sold in bunches. I thought they were scallions at first! |
Another new item we discovered is the soursop fruit, which abound here in Antigua.
It’s so popular that the juice is processed and sold here
in the supermarkets. Soursop is
very common in tropical climates, but most Americans aren’t that familiar with
them as the trees can’t survive in most of the US -- it’s simply too cold.
(According to Wikipedia, temperatures below 41 °F will cause damage to leaves and small
branches, and temperatures below 37 °F can be "fatal". Ouch!) Soursop fruit
are large, green ovals with short stubby spines; the thin outer skin is easily
cut away to get to the juicy, cream-colored fruit inside. The fruit is used in
many ways, from ice cream, sherbets and desserts to beverages throughout the
Caribbean. Always willing to try something new, we gave soursop juice a try,
and found it to be delicious! A pale, grapefruit color, it tastes rather like strawberry but more tangy and tart.
(It’s a great mixer with either rum or vodka, by the way!)
Yesterday, after checking out the local market, we were walking along the streets and checking out the stalls of the many street vendors and found one woman selling noni, a whitish, potato-sized bumpy fruit. I'd certainly never seen them before!! They are found on the noni tree, or the morinda
citrifolia. (I had to Google "noni", as I wasn't even sure I'd heard the name of the fruit correctly, since the woman had a thick West Indian accent.) and apparently have a very, um...distinctive
smell. Its odor is so unpleasant that it's nicknamed the “cheese fruit” or
(even worse) “the vomit fruit”. Really! Thankfully, I couldn't smell them (I'm not sure Ron got close enough to them to do so) but the woman was most insistent that they were quite healthy for you, being the
“aspirin” plant, having all sorts of uses, from curing headaches to being an
aphrodisiac, to easing arthritis, cuts, bruises and even gout, among others. We passed on the noni, nevertheless.
Soursop for sale at the St. John's public market |
Upon later investigation, we discovered that you have to ferment the
fruit first before getting any juice. You place the fruit in a glass jar and
let it sit for a week to a month (or more!) in the sun, and then extract the
juice. A lot of folk mix its juice with honey or other fruit juices to make it
more palatable, since it’s fairly nasty tasting. Knowing that its smell and
taste are unpleasant, I am so glad we don't have it fermenting aboard the boat!