The fruit here. Oh wow. The fruit. We can’t get enough of it. I go to the market almost every day, and almost every time I’m there I stop at my fruit stand. There will definitely be future blog posts about the market, and about my fruit vendors (mis caseritas) there. Maybe I’ll even try for a little caserita interview, once my Spanish is better…but for now, I want to introduce you to some Peruvian fruits. This is part one in an N part series. There’s a lot of fruit down here, y’all.

Granadilla

Our rug in the background matches the seeds. Totally on purpose.

Native mainly to Peru, granadilla is in the alien egg (or passionfruit) family. The edible part is that goop around the seeds. Like maracuyá (passionfruit), the seeds are crunchy and hollow, so you can eat them too. While the texture is a lot like passionfruit, the flavor is sweet and melony, not tart at all. They’re also super fun to eat, and seem to stay ripe without spoiling for a while. We always have three or four of them in our fruit bowl (also we have a fruit bowl. ADULTING).

Lulu

Mini granadilla! I can’t seem to find references to these online (they might actually just be mini granadilla?) but they’re different than lulo, which are also at the mercado, but we haven’t tried yet. They taste just like granadilla, but they’re just one little bite. If I’m just buying one, my caserita doesn’t charge me, and it never makes it into my grocery bag.

On the street right outside the market. They rarely make it much further.

Tumbo

One more in the alien egg family, tumbo (called banana passionfruit in English) are another favorite. They’re much closer in flavor to a regular passionfruit—tart, a little sweet, and delicious. Maybe it’s just the color tricking my brain, but I do think that tumbo : maracuyá : : orange : lemon—tumbo are a little bit sweeter and…orange-y. The seeds are hard and not the most delicious, so eating one involves spitting out a lot of seeds, but I recently discovered (from my caserita again) that if you whirl the fruit through the blender, then strain it, it’s pretty easy to extract a ton of juice. A few nights ago I juiced a kilo of tumbo and used the juice to braise some pork ribs (with honey, chili, onion and garlic). Definitely something I’m going to try again.

I guess they’re kinda shaped like bananas?

Guayaba

So I know guava are in the US too, but they’re not something I often eat (and certainly not this cheap). Lots of hard seeds, like tumbo, so in retrospect we should have strained this into juice when we were making smoothies (I make us smoothies every morning with frozen fruit and milk—it’s a habit from the US, but it’s a lot more fun down here). Not a super strong flavor, but the texture is really, really nice. Crazy creamy, like custard. Definitely need to figure out how to work this into a dessert of some kind.

Lit by some rare winter sunbeams.

Pepino

Definitely melon-y (like honeydew), it’s a really lovely, sweet, gentle flavor. And it doesn’t look great in the picture, but the purple and yellow skin is gorgeous, too. The one time we tried this was in an ill conceived fruit salad with yogurt and algarrobina, but I think it belongs somewhere more melon-esque. Pepino and cucumber juice would be pretty delicious. Or pepino gazpacho. Or pepino and proscuitto for sure.

Next time, less algarrobina.

There are a few more fruits we’ve tried, and a ton of fruit we haven’t tried yet, that will make it into future posts. Come visit and we’ll go nuts on some jugos. Can’t wait.