Sunday, October 5, 2003

Guava As it turns out, one of the mystery fruit trees is a Guava tree (excellent summary) (the other is a Quince tree) and it is absolutely loaded with fruit. The Guava are wonderful. Both my wife and I are wondering why we haven't made them a regular part of our diet before! As it turns out, Guava are also an incredible source for Vitamin C -- much higher than Oranges. So far, we have made Jam, Margaritas and Salsa. All excellent. For the Margaritas and Salsa, start by cutting the Guava into small chunks and fill a blender. Then grind the hell out of 'em. Seriously, grind it down to the thinnest pulp you can. Then, pour the resulting Guava Goo into a chinois or strainer and press out all the liquid and a bunch the pulp. The key is to leave behind the seeds and tough bits of skin. The end result in, our case, was something that looked like applesauce. For the salsa, I based my recipe on this Carrot guava salsa found via google. Instead of adding dried fruit, we cut a bunch of grilled corn off some cobs from the previous evening's meal (the trick is to soak the corn in its husk in a bucket water for a half an hour, then slap it directly on the grill until the husk nearly burns off -- until the corn kernels are brown/black -- as the sugars in the corn will have now caramelized a bit). We used three habanero peppers. While the salsa is spicy, it is not unduly so. It has a wonderful fruity opening -- very sweet -- with a pure, but not overwhelming, distinctive habanero finish. For the margaritas, start with your favorite margarita recipe (Cuervo not allowed -- nor is any kind of a mix... if that's your favority, you aren't drinking real margaritas) and add a bunch of Guava Goo. It adds an excellent tropical fruit flavor to the margaritas. And if you dump the guava goo into the tequila directly, it looks kinda like.... well, I'm not sure, but it is definitely alien. For the Jam, my wife followed this recipe but cut the sugar to 1/4 of what was called for. Can't find the recipe... 3:53:12 PM  pontificate