Cooking Fire

Pitaya is the scaly-skinned fruit of a column cactus, indigenous to Mexico. As you see from the pictures it is very watery, fist-sized, and drips juice as deep and staining as wine. Peeled, it resembles nothing more than the icons of a bleeding heart: a perfect Aztec crop.

A plant of the desert, it produces this very watery fruit, attractive to thirsty animals as a vehicle to spread its seeds. Its flesh has a gravely, spongy consistency — like overripe watermelon. It is dotted with little black seeds, so numerous and small, they cannot be avoided. Like kiwis, they give the fruit a crunchy texture.

Its taste is soft and not overly sweet, like watermelon toward the rind. Not acidic, it is very pleasant and refreshing. It is made into desserts, sometimes mixed with milk for ice creams. I prefer it as fruit — the taste of pitaya is so subtle that the sugar doesn’t draw out the taste, it overwhelms it. [Side: In the South, we’ll sometimes salt watermelon, which has the effect of making the fruit taste sweeter. I wonder if salt would intensify the taste of pitaya. I will update this with the results next time I find one at the market. -W]

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2005 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Ingredients and Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.