Malaysia

The tamarillo is also called a “tree tomato”.  It doesn’t have much of an aroma to speak of, and the purple ones look like oblong plums (there are also red and yellow versions).  The outer skin is much thicker than a tomato, and inedibly bitter.  The flesh inside is orange, and softly firm – similar to a non-grainy tomato tecture, but more firm like a persimmon.  Inside the flesh are small seeds, encased in a dark red juicy pulp.  When cut, the juice tends to run out a little bit, and looks like the juice from a blood orange (very red).  The taste is tangy, and savory-sweet.  It tastes like a deeply ripe tomato, with a hint of passionfruit and guava.  The aftertaste is mostly savory, like the aftertaste of a somewhat tart fresh tomato.

There’s a wikipedia article at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarillo

 

 

Pulasan is a close relative of the rambutan (and lychee).  Its outer spines are much more stiff than the rambutan’s, so it feels rough, though not sharp.  The spines are just stiff enough to use as leverage in order to peel the fruit, which makes getting into these the easiest version of these fruit relatives so far – just grab on and pull or twist, and the skin comes right off.  It doesn’t really have much of an aroma, just a mild sweet fragrance.  The edible inside flesh is juicy and springy-soft, like a firm grape.  Its flavor is basically just sweet, with no real other distinguishing qualities – it tastes like a mild lychee, but it could also be compared to a very bland grape.  There’s a single large seed in the middle of each fruit, which is not eaten.  There is a bark-like shell around the inner seed, like a rambutan, but it only sometimes clings to the edible flesh, making this fruit significantly easier to eat.

There is a wikipedia article about pulasan at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulasan

 

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

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