Dragonfruit

[redbird]

We bought a dragonfruit in Chinatown on Saturday. They're impressively magenta. Knowing nothing about how to tell a good one from a bad, I asked the fruitmonger to select one for me.

cattitude looked it up when he got home. The web suggested chilling it, cutting it in half, and spooning out the flesh, so it's been in the refrigerator. Sliced open, the magenta rind revealed white flesh with lots of tiny black seeds.

Unfortunately, it didn't really taste like anything. Cattitude and adrian_turtle concur in this assessment; it's not just that I'm coming down with a cold. It may just be underripe, and I may look for another one later, ideally in company with someone who knows about them. However, we have given up on this dragonfruit, and will be having chocolate chip–pumpkin bread for our dessert.

Either the fruitmonger didn't know how to select a good dragonfruit either, or he figured he'd unload a large, not-yet-ripe one on the ignorant. (They were selling by the pound, not the each.)

I just went to my ongoing entry on new foods for the year, to enter "Dragon fruit" and found that the first entry was for dried dragon fruit, which I described as vaguely sweet, with no other noticeable flavor. Cattitude and Adrian may wish to give it another try, but I probably won't.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I've had them as served on the breakfast buffet in a fancy hotel in Taipei - so the people doing the selecting ought to know when they're ripe. And no, they don't seem to have a lot of flavor.

I've had them dried

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

They were all right, but not outstanding, and the subsequent faint red coloration imparted to my urine and stool was rather disquieting.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I've not had fresh dragonfruit yet, but I've had some packs of dried dragonfruit from Trader Joes that reminded me of strawberries (though much of that may have been the dark red color and all the little black seeds).

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

They don't ever taste like much (well, perhaps they do in their native environs, but we've never gotten one that did) but they're so dramatic that I still sometimes buy them to put in fruit salads and the like as an edible/visual accent.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Yes, they're pretty to look at but not much flavor. I was sad once when I used one as the dramatic centerpiece to a fruit salad at a buffet and someone cut it up.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

I had dragonfruit whilst in Thailand, and thought it didn't taste like anything, too.

dragonfruit

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i've had one certified as ripe by a vietnamese friend, and it tasted like nothing much; mildly sweet, but bland. certainly nothing like what it promises with its amazing looks.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I had some fantastic dragonfruit last week in Singapore. No, I don't know how to tell a good one from a bad one either.

B