Before we get to the fun part, remember that I’m currently working up a podcast that, if you’d like, you can take to the grocery store. Want to know which brands give you the biggest nutritional bang for your buck? When to go organic and when, if constrained, you can let it go? Which commercial yogurt comes closest to the kind you would get from a grass-fed farm share? It’s all coming up here!
Moving on: in honor of the Day of Football, allow me to present you with a football fruit.
There is, in South Florida, a fruit that will tease and cajole you into madness. Her name, fetching reader, is Mamey Sapote (pronounced mah-MAY, accent on the second syllable, as she only looks Mrs.-Eisenhower-frumpy).
If you’ve never heard of this delicious wonder, know that mamey is, bar none, the best fruit you’ve never tried. Creamy. Sweet, but not cloying. Thick, but not heavy. Texture-wise, mamey is a cross between a banana and a sweet potato. Taste-wise, you might sense a flash of pumpkin. Hints of chocolate. Even caramel. Perhaps even amaretto.
And did I mention that mamey is creamy?
OK, I’m starting to fidget. This stuff is a gateway fruit. Upon tasting it, you will find yourself pining for all foods tropical.
People in Central America, Mexico, northern South America and the West Indies have had the brilliance – the genius! — to cultivate mamey for centuries. I love to dry it; it tastes like caramel that way. I also love — winter be damned — to make ice cream from it. (See the top left photo in my header? That’s it.)
You can make the ice cream, too: to do so, you need the following ingredients:
Mamey.
That’s it. Oh, and a freezer.
You don’t even have to whirl the mamey around in a blender or food processor if you are feeling particularly wilty. Mamey is lovely to eat raw and out of hand, but my favorite way to coax it into its fullest beauty is to let it ripen on the counter, split it open, take out the big seed pod, scoop out the flesh (avocado-style), and then cube the coral-orange orbs. Freeze those chunks.
There. Ice cream. When frozen, mamey chunks retain a chewy texture, and they are sweet enough to be savored unadorned. A perfect, pocket-sized snack.
No mamey? Alas…
* You can try mamey ice cream at many Whole Foods Markets in the southeastern part of the country. Just look (and ask!) for the Gaby’s Farm brand. You could also, if you’re semi-local, check in with South Florida’s resident goat whisperer Hani Khouri to see if he’s carrying any Organic Mamey Goat Milk Ice Cream. (Hani’s goat milk products are the BEST.)
* You can visit Florida and stop by Robert is Here, a famed fruit stand in the Everglades that sells fantastic (and huge!) fruit shakes made from ingredients such as mamey. Here are my svelte and beautiful Euro friends enjoying one:
* You can use a frozen banana (or even mango) to make another delicious one-ingredient ice cream.
Or, you can just move here. Yes, move here for the mamey: people decamp to Paris all the time just for the croissants and raw cheese and baguettes, non? And then, if you know nothing else in life, you will indeed know one thing for sure: football or no, mamey’s presence means it’s Eating Season.
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Will you mail me one? Sounds awesome!
I cannot, dear Alta, for I guarantee you would then immediately abandon Texas for Miami’s fair climes, and I cannot deprive our home state of both of us.