Weird Fruit

Just when you think you've seen it all ...

Dave and I are finishing up our tenth year in Asia and we're still in the 'discovery' stage. Our newness is brought home to us everytime we hit a food market, be it here at home in Kuala Lumpur or on our travels around the region. No matter the locality, no matter the time of year, we're almost always guaranteed to stumble upon something - fruit, vegetable, ingredient, prepared food - we've never seen before.

We found this smooth-skinned, heavy fruit on our first morning in Chiang Mai, at Myang Mai morning market. Two vendors, each with a single basket of fruit, told us it grows wild on Doi Ang Khang  (aka Thailand's 'Little Switzerland' and home to one of the King's Royal Agricultural Projects). Called dien taw, the fruit was fetching the exceedingly high price of 60 baht a kilo (about 75 US cents a pound).

As Dave took photographs Thais wandered up to examine the fruit. Not a one had seen it before.

'So sweet', the vendors assured us. 'Eat it when it's very, very soft'. We bought a couple, took them back to our room, placed them on the dining table, and forgot about them.

Four days later, as we were readying to leave Chiang Mai for Nan province, I remembered the dien taw. 'Don't forget to pack the weird fruit!' I called over to Dave (who usually does most of our packing).

And four more days later, as we were preparing to drive north from Nan: 'Be sure to grab the weird fruit!' Which, more than a week after we'd bought it, was still rock-hard.

The weird fruit accompanied us north and then west, to Fang and Tha Thon and Ang Khang, and then back down to Chiang Mai. Three days later we - and the weird fruit - were back where we'd started, in Chiang Mai. And finally, it was starting to soften.

The next morning we headed back to Myang Mai market. There were dien taw - baskets and baskets of them - everywhere. Not just at Myang Mai but at Warorot market as well, nestled next to avocadoes and surrounded by plastic-wrapped styrofoam trays of red globe grapes and peeled pomelo. We'd apparently hit the height of dien taw season, for the price had dropped to 20 baht a kilo.

Two days later our 60 baht-a-kilo dien taw was 'very, very' soft and ready to eat. I cut it in half to find two burnished brown seeds and smooth, starchy golden flesh. Dien taw's texture is a cross between that of a rich, dense Haas avocado and cooked butternut squash, and its flavor is quite like the latter. The flesh is a bit dry and exceedingly sweet, but weird, not at all what I think of as 'fruit-like'. I'd be more likely to eat dien taw hot and mashed, mixed with butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper, than out of hand.

Update: Mystery solved, thanks to vigilant EatingAsia reader Bobbie (see comments section), who directed us to this picture of the weird fruit on the tree. The fruit is a lucuma, native to the Andes mountains of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, where it is eaten out of hand or made into ice cream. This site describes the lucuma as having thin skin and 'dry and starchy orange-yellow flesh' - a description that fits the weird fruit to a 'T' - and notes that in Peru and Chile, where the most lucumas are grown, only a small percentage reach the market in the raw state. Most are dehydrated and ground to a powder that is used to make ice cream and other milk products. South American lucuma are in season January to April. The question is, how - and when - did the fruit make its way from the Andes to the mountains of northwestern Thailand?

Comments

[Ilva]

I admire your patience!

[quercer]

Is dien taw anything like the Indonesian sawo?

[Robyn]

Ilva, when we travel we have the bad habit of buying everything that looks good and interesting at the market and then, for lack of belly space or bec. it's ripened too much or not enough, throwing half of it away. I was determined not to toss these weird fruits!

Quercer - no, it's nothing like sawo (sapodilla, 'lamut' in Thai). There's no juice, wateriness at all, and the texture is very different - not to mention sawo look like small brownish mangoes and dien thaw looks like, well, the photograph. (The two are similarly sweet, though.) I'm hoping someone in SE Asia will see this post, recognize the fruit, and point me to a scientific name.

[Bobbie]

This guy's website http://www.davestravel.com/photos/fruit/index.htm
with loads of piccies of fruit has this picture http://www.davestravel.com/photos/fruit/Thai-Fruit.JPG
and he thinks it's most likely a lucuma. Does that look like the elusive dien taw? Apparently it's from Peru originally.

[home cook]

Wow, I love your blog. You totally have a new reader!

[Pepy]

Thank you for posting about this weird fruit. I've never had it before

[Robyn]

Home Cook - welcome to EatingAsia, and thanks!

Pepy - so we can assume lucuma isn't found in Indonesia?

[Duy]

they have lecuma in Vietnam too .

[Pepy]

I think so, Robyn.
One of my friend who lives in the US, said that she saw that lecuma at Chinese grocery in LA

[anonymous paul]

we have it here in the philippines as well. its known as 'chesa' or 'achesa' locally.

[Noneng]

Hmmm... I do believe it is a chesa!

[anonermous]

how much vitermen c is in each on and how many do i need for it to count as 1 of my 5 aday

[martin]

the described fruit must be the one i tried several times in the philippines, which is called "chesa" or "canistel". many fruits found their way from south america to the philippines (and then to other south east asia) when the spanish inquisition happened. the philippines are a key-destination for the transfer of plants from south america to south east asia, because it was the only spanish colony in asia. so it was a kind of hub for cultural exchange. hope, this was helpful...

[shanice]

hi can utell me whether this fruit has vitamin c in it and how many calories it contains please thankyou

[Robyn]

Martin - thanks for the info.

[duongusa]

Looked at this post from Purdue university, you can find the food value of the fruit.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/canistel.html

BTW: name reference to 'lucuma' may be the wrong name, but this is another topic. I have the fuit when I was young, but never like it (after taste)

[oluwaseun olufemi abayomi]

i love this fruit

[Caitlin Woodgate]

Hi i cant find any infomation on the wird fruits i want and it is for a prodfect at school please help me!

[MABIEL HERNANDEZ]

THANKS FOR THE WEIRD FRUIT...AWESOME I;M FROM CENTRAL MEXICO,FROM A STATE CALL QUERETARO.AND I HAVE ONE OF THOSE TREES IN MY HOUSE ,IT WAS THE ONLY TREE IN MY SMALL HOMETOWN, IN MY FAMILY NOBODY LIKED THAT FRUIT,BUT WE GAVE IT TO SOME PEOPLE WHO DID,WE WRONGFULLY CALLED IT YELLOW ZAPOTE,BECAUSE IT LIKENESS TO THE WHITE ZAPOTE,WE ALSO HAVE A TREE OF THE OTHER FRUIT THAT LOOKS LIKE A LONG BANANA ,IT TASTES LIKE SUGAR CANE ,YOU CAN CHEW ON IT AND I'VE HEARD IT'S GOOD IN SOUP,BUT WE DID'T HAVE USE FOR IT AND FEED IT TO OUR PIGS,NOT THAT IT WAS BAD ,WE JUST DID'T USE IT

[markfil tersol]

could you please tell me how to make chesa chocolate bars with that chesa seeds?? because i need it badly with my investigatory project...

thank you very much!!

[Thomas]

hi i am doin a gcse project on fruit and veg and i need to add 5 strange un-heard of fruit or veg ad i was wondering if you could tell me some i will need to know
name,type (F or V), colour, units, quantity (of units for 1 portion of fruit or veg) vitamins and calories thank you

[sarah]

this is so cool

[reyjay]

It is indeed called chesa in the Philippines and it's my favorite fruit! To each his own, I guess. I'm a blogger as well and here's a picture:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2653197900_6617090db4_m.jpg

If it's picked as a 'mature' fruit, it'll only take a couple of days for it to ripen.

[chumpman]

it looks a little bit like cocoa fruit. dat is really nice, sweet sourish

[ricardo]

I saw this fruit when I livein Hawaii, but very rarely. It was called eggfruit. Quality varied a lot, often it was too dry. Occasionally I had some that were very good! Today, in Thailand, a Frenchman described what is likely this fruit, and said it was the most delicious fruit he had ever had. He saw it in Saraburi province.