Meeting Mamay
I can’t resist new life forms, particularly when they inhabit fruit and vegetable stands. The other day I wandered into the one in the Stanford shopping center, and spotted a soft, heavy football with a scratchy skin. It wore a nametag: Mamay.
Hello, Mamay.
Mamay is a Cuban native weighing two or three pounds, which is a lot of fruit if you don’t like the flavor. But I did. It’s a delightfully weird fruit, not super sweet, with the texture of baked sweet potatoes and an overtone of its relative, the sapote (known in India as the chiku.) It has a giant and very shiny seed (the one in the photo is nearly the length of my hand) which was sprouting merrily inside. However, I was relieved to read that the seeds don’t necessarily grow true to type, because I’d have felt obligated to put the thing in my garden, and there I would have been, standing on the street giving away three-pound footballs that taste like sapote crossed with sweet potatoes.
I recently discovered a singer named Dave Brown.
He’s from Eastbourne in Sussex. So, I naturally thought of Mary and Sherlock 🙂
One of his songs titled . . . “The Way the Heart Breaks” . . . is beautifully sad.
Always fun to experience something different – especially food-wise! And as a writer, someday this vegetable may figure into a new Holmes/Russell adventure! I learned something new too – thanks!
I love discovering new fruits and vegetables. My favorite from a couple of years ago was the winged bean, which is simply a square, elongated green bean, with ruffles at the corners. Tastes exactly like a green bean wearing a tuxedo shirt, and it makes me smile every time I serve them.
My step-daughter’s husband did his food science PdD in the winged bean! (which will grow in the tropics unlike many other legumes)
Wing beans (along with several other slightly exotic veggies) feature in pinakbet, a Filipino vegetable stew, and are very tasty.
The description of mamay sounds like another tropical fruit, the eggfruit, but on steroids. I wonder if they are related.
Some day I’ll have to introduce you to my friend Sam, who loves trying out Weird Fruits and Vegetables. He’s brought some things home that I would never have thought were edible. Sometimes the experiment works, sometimes…not.