PO‘IPU — The line never stopped for two hours last Wednesday, and at the end, as the sun dipped into the horizon, a shopper smiled in glee at The Kaua‘i Culinary Market at The Shops at Kukui‘ula. “I don’t believe
PO‘IPU — The line never stopped for two hours last Wednesday, and at the end, as the sun dipped into the horizon, a shopper smiled in glee at The Kaua‘i Culinary Market at The Shops at Kukui‘ula.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, holding high his prized mango, a remnant of the fruit sampling. “You never find a ripe mango anywhere at this time of year.”
But the mango was there along with nutmeg, cashew, longan and a host of lesser-known fruit grown on Kaua‘i and throughout the state at the weekly Wednesday market.
Originally, Living Foods Chef Michael Simpson was scheduled to demonstrate some of the tropical fruit, but when the Hawai‘i Tropical Fruit Growers became aware, the event expanded to include free samples of both the chef’s demonstration centering around pummelo, the largest citrus fruit known, and spreading out to include samples of other fresh tropical fruit.
“The pomelo, also spelled pummelo, is the grapefruit’s larger and sweeter cousin,” Simpson said, his hands wielding a vegetable shaver and deftly carving off strips of rind from the large fruit, careful not to cut too deeply, avoiding the bitter white portion of the rind. “In Hawai‘i, the Japanese people called it ‘Zabon,’ and later, the Filipino changed it to ‘Jabong.’”
The shaved pieces of rind were set aside to caramelize similar to the Chinese rinds while Simpson set out to create his Thai Pomelo Salad with Kaua‘i Shrimp.
“The pomelo we are featuring in the Thai salad is everything, and more of what a good grapefruit should be — firm, juicy, sweet and with great useable fruit yield versus rind,” Simpson said. “It has a long shelf life as well. We have conventional pink and yellow grapefruit growing on Kaua‘i, but for an exciting and locally-sourced variation, which holds up very well in a salad, pomelo is the one to use. It, too, is available in light green, white, yellow and pink.”
The demonstration and fresh fruit sampling was produced by the Hawai‘i Tropical Fruit Growers in an effort to share information about the pomelo and other not-so-well-known edibles, which are available in Hawai‘i, states a HTFG release.
Members are growing a wide variety of ultra-exotic tropical fruits statewide and claim the fruits are under-utilized by the mainstream market.
Some of the ultra-exotics under cultivation in Hawai‘i include the Surinam cherry, calamonsie, jackfruit, ‘ulu, tamarillos, chico, lychee, white sapote, bilimbi and more, a release states.
HTFG is working to build markets for these juicy fruits through a series of free public taste tests and culinary demonstrations similar to the one at The Kaua‘i Culinary Market. The demonstrations are scheduled for stores throughout the state through the rest of the year.
“This is a very exciting program for us and exactly why the Kaua‘i Culinary Market was created — to promote and sell local foods grown by the farmers as well as connect consumers to chefs and farmers,” said Melissa McFerrin, the executive administrator of the Kaua‘i Farm Bureau and coordinator of the Po‘ipu and Kaua‘i Community Market, in the release.
The HTFG tour is titled “New Markets for Ultra-Exotic Fruits” and is funded by the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture through a USDA competitive grant program to foster small farm sustainability.
During the events, people are invited to taste the chef’s recipes while stores stock the fruit in their produce sections along with recipes and additional fruit information to take home.
“The idea of buying locally-raised food is decades old and has matured enough on Kaua‘i to make it viable and convenient,” Simpson said. “You are doing the planet, and the farmer, a great and needed service apart from eating healthy and encountering new and unusual varieties like the pomelo.”
The HTFG, incorporated in 1989 to promote tropical fruit grown in Hawai‘i, is a statewide association of tropical fruit growers, packers, distributors and hobbyists dedicated to tropical fruit research, education, marketing and promotion.
Visit www.htfg.org for more information.
For more information on the New Markets for Ultra-Exotic Fruits, call HTFG president Ken Love at (808) 969-7926 or email ken@mycoffee.net.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@ thegardenisland.com.
