When I got home, I looked it up online and learned that dragon fruit, also called pitya, is actually the fruit of a climbing plant in the cactus family, native to Central and South America but also popular in Asian countries. The plant only flowers at night, and is pollinated by bats and moths. The fruit can be cut in half to reveal a soft, juicy white (or sometimes yellow or red, depending on the variety) flesh with lots of tiny (edible) black seeds distributed throughout. To eat it, you just scoop the fruit out of the artichoke-like pink and green outer peel with a spoon. It can also be cut into cubes and added to fruit salads, or made into a puree or juice in a blender. Dragon fruit is high in vitamin C, B vitamins, phosphorus, protein, iron, calcium, fiber, captin, lycopene, and antioxidants. The little black seeds are high in polyunsaturated fats (omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids). I looked forward to trying it.
But then I went out of town for a week. I had a chance to try dried dragon fruit while I was away, and I really liked it. It was reddish-purple and chewy with a pleasant flavor and crunchy little seeds inside. I was excited to try fresh dragon fruit when I got back home.
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| Dried Dragon Fruit in Trail Mix |
But alas, the next time I went to the grocery store, there were no dragon fruit to be found. I haunted the produce department to the point that the produce manager would see me coming and say "sorry, still no dragon fruit". I thought I had missed my opportunity to try something different and cursed my hesitation to buy it in the first place.
But then, several weeks later, after I had given up all hope, I walked through the produce section on unrelated business and there, in a tropical fruit display, was Dragon fruit! Needless to say, I pounced and bought two of the beautiful fruits before they could disappear again.
With great anticipation, and cut the fruit in half and scooped out the seed-studded white flesh with a spoon. The feeling that followed could best be described as...disappointment. The fruit barely had any flavor! I couldn't even say that it resembled anything else...it was like watery plant flavor. What I tasted the most was the seeds, which reminded me of chia seeds and were not unpleasant, but not exciting either. You would think that the potency of the flavor would match the intensity of the fruit's beauty. Not so. If I bought any more, I think the only way I would have really enjoyed eating it would be cut up in a fruit salad with strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, and grapes, with lemon juice squeezed on top.
I went back to the internet to try to unravel the mystery of why my fruit was so flavorless. It is supposed to have a mild pear/kiwi flavor, and several sources said the fruit tastes sweet when ripe, but I didn't taste anything. It seemed ripe to me, because the fruit was soft. Maybe it was picked too soon and didn't ripen properly. I read that the fruit tastes best when it is grown locally and allowed to ripen on the tree, and that if it comes from the grocery store, it was imported and the flavor suffers. That is true of most fruits, but apparently it makes a bigger difference in dragon fruit.The internet also informed me that the peel should be darker pink (rather than bright, pretty pink) and kind of thin, dried out and leathery, with some brown on the tips, and that is when it is truly ripe. I also learned that the dragon fruits with red flesh inside (like the dried one I tried) tend to be more flavorful.
Alas, this is how my tale ends. Perhaps someday I will try dragon fruit again, hopefully with more satisfying results. Have you ever tried dragon fruit? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments below!
Fare ye well,
Shelby
