Fruit – Sugar Aple

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The sugar apple (sometimes called a custard apple or sweetsop) is related to the soursop and the cherimoya.  Most of them are actually green colored, but we found some really nice looking purple ones.  The outer skin is relatively soft, but fairly thick, and kind of resembles a pine cone with its bumpy segmented shape.  Inside, a whole bunch of small black seeds are individually encased in the creamy white flesh segments.  The flesh is somewhat grainy, and tastes sweet and creamy, almost like a mild banana-mango custard.  There is no real smell to the fruit itself.

More information about sugar apples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar-apple

Fruit – Ciku (Sapodilla)

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Called a sapodilla back home, and ciku (chikoo, chiku) in Malaysia (and sapota or zapota in other places), we actually had a hard time getting a ripe version of this.  From the outside, it looks rather like a small potato, having a rough brown, grainy skin and oblong appearance.  When ripe, they are somewhat soft when squeezed, like a tomato.  The inside flesh is soft and and earthy brown in color, it looks and feels almost like a well-cooked sweet potato.  Contained within are a few hard black seeds.  When unripe, the flesh is hard and extremely drying to the mouth, like an unripe persimmon (or the most heavily over-brewed tea you can think of).  When ripe though, the soft flesh is deliciously sweet and malty, almost like a toasted brown sugar or caramel flavor.

For more info, see the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manilkara_zapota

A Video about Where We Live

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The video highlights some of the interesting sights from the area, along with how some things are both similar to and different from back home.

Fruit – Soursop

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Soursop has a somewhat soft green or green-yellow skin, covered with soft spine bumps (the spines are also really soft, and usually break off).  It varies in size somewhat but is about the size of a coconut.  The hard black seeds are a flat oval shape, and inedible.  The flesh is offwhite, and quite soft.  It’s juicy and a little grainy, with some stringy fibers like you might find in a very stringy mango.  We tried eating it with a spoon at first because it is so soft, but the fibers made that not work out very well.  It smells like banana, pineapple, and gardenia flowers.  It tastes, again, like banana-pineapple-gardenia, plus has some sour and acidic flavor.  We’ve had soursop juice before (it’s pretty easy to get, soursop also grows in Mexico and multiple places in South America) and the fruit basically tastes exactly like the juice, just with more fiber.

There’s more information on soursop here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop