For summer, a banquet of exotic fresh fruits: Bring travel back home

So you’re at home this summer. Your vacation budget is bust. Sure, there are backyard barbeques with friends and family stretching out into summer, but that tropical vacation feels long gone.

Or perhaps, you have never been on a tropical vacation. Perhaps a tropical fruit to you is the canned version of Dole pineapple–the one that waits in your kitchen cabinet.

Hop to it. An exotic experience might be as close as your neighborhood grocery store. As you browse the fruit, section buy those that you haven’t tried before.

Perhaps, they are the odd looking ones. Go head. Pick one up. If you’re heading to a barbeque, bring some with you and give your friends a geography lesson with the bounty. If you’re a parent, pull out a geography book and give your kids a taste of the world.

Here are suggestions and countries where such tastes can be had. I found them in local markets where I’ve lived and traveled, and some of them, in my own backyard.

1. Last year we purchased three dragon fruits in Chinatown in New York City. Dragon fruits, a nickname for pitaya, are cultivated in Vietnam, among other places. Those three brought back memories of our pleasures of first trying them on our first Vietnam visit. Even though I’ve had them elsewhere, I attach them to this Vietnam experience.

2. In Bangkok, we head straight to the fresh coconut stand across from the Regency Park where we always stay. The vendors cut off the tops of coconuts, add a hole and slip in a straw. Sucking out fresh coconut juice is one of my daughter’s favorite treats.

3. Taiwan was the first place I ate a star fruit. A friend of mine had carefully cut one of these slightly sweet fruits into star-shaped slices and arranged them on a plate for a lunchtime dish.

4. Also in Taiwan, on a bus ride to Taroko Gorge, I ate an Asian pear for the first time at a rest stop. The crunchy, refreshing taste is distinct from the pears grown in the U.S. They’re like apples, but not quite.

5. In the Gambia, I was greeted each morning during the rainy season by a tree filled with mangoes that created welcome shade in my backyard. With lack of refrigeration, I ate mangoes morning, noon and night and made mango jam, mango bread and added mango slices to oatmeal. Since the season for that tree was so short, I didn’t have time to get tired of them. Not all mangoes are the same. I prefer the ones with juicy flesh and very little strings to get caught in my teeth.

6. If you’ve ever eaten bananas where they are grown, particularly the red ones that are not much bigger than a fat finger, you’ll have a hard time adjusting to the Cavendish variety most common to grocery stores. The Gambia also was a worthy introduction into banana wealth.

7. Also, in the Gambia, papaya trees were one of the easiest fruit trees to grow. Thus, papayas were everywhere, and almost all year long. Although I like them, I suggest squirting a bit of lime on your slice to add a bit of zip to the flavor.

8. The first time I ate a pomelo, my great aunt and uncle brought one back from California. As a young girl, the size amazed me. It’s the largest citrus fruit there is. Before I ate it, I took it to school for show and tell.

9. Singapore is a fruit lovers delight. Even though we had a durian tree in our backyard, we let other people have the fruit that is so stinky it’s banned on subways. I have had durian ice cream and found it appealing.

10. I first developed a taste for rambutans that we bought from the market in Singapore. One isn’t enough.

Of course, if you happen to live in the tropics, relish what you have. You’re lucky. You get the goods fresh off the trees.

Photo of the Day (6.7.09)

I’m loving the simply symmetry of Flickr user arunchs’ photo above of mangoes in India. The repetition of pattern and form, the geometry of stacking and the bright colors all caught my eye. It’s offset nicely by a few touches of light pinkish-orange color on a few of the riper pieces of fruit, adding some nice breaks in the pattern. I doubt an abstract painter could ask for a better source of inspiration.

Discovered any masterpieces of color or geometry while you were traveling? Why not add your photos to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of your photos as our Photo of the Day.

“No Reservations” season 4, episode 12: Colombia

Location: This week Anthony is in Colombia, a country that finds itself the setting of one of South America’s most remarkable transformations. In the 25 years since the death of Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s most notorious drug lords, this once war-torn country has emerged like a phoenix from the scars of the past. Colombia offers Tony a tantalizing mix of cultures, delicious food and beautiful mountain scenery.

Episode Rating: Four bloody meat cleavers (out of five) in keeping with last week’s rating system.

Summary: Cocaine. Violence. Political instability. These are the unfortunate but typical words that are associated with Colombia, South America’s northern-most state. For many years the country suffered under the weight of rival drug cartels, fueled by an insatiable demand for their chief “pulse-raising” product in the United States and beyond. It is these very depictions that Tony comes armed to confront upon arriving in Colombia. Within the episode’s first five minutes Bourdain has already pronounced his visit to Colombia as an unexpected delight. Colombia is literally a country-transformed and with killer food to boot.
Tony wastes little time diving into the country’s cuisine. He meets up with restaurant owner Jorge in Cartagena, a city on the country’s Caribbean coast. After sampling some delicious ceviche at Jorge’s restaurant, the pair take a trip to Cartagena’s central market to shop for some fish. Mr. Bourdain looks like a kid in a candy store as he conducts taste tests on all manner of exotic produce – five types of mangoes, strange orange-lime hybrids, pretty much anything fruity and delicious is available and there for the tasting.

To top it off, Tony enjoys a hearty local dish consisting of seafood rice, chicken, fish and turtle eggs, the local delicacy. Ashamed that you’re eating an endangered species Tony? Although our host gives the ethics of turtle egg-eating momentary pause, the egg is already well on its way down his digestive tract before the issue comes up. All of you just promise you won’t try any turtle eggs if you decide to visit Colombia, cool?

Soon we are transported to Bocagrande, one of Cartagena’s flashiest neighborhoods, where Tony boards a small water taxi for a trip to a small fishing island just across the bay. The rustic island stands in stark contrast to the flashy mainland high rises, and Bourdain takes the opportunity to enjoy a laid-back lunch with a local free-diver, who catches him a Caribbean lobster for lunch. Throw the words fresh, lobster and rustic island together and you don’t need to add much else – the story basically tells itself. It was almost tortuous to watch him eat it all and not get a taste.

The next and final stop on Tony’s Colombian odyssey is Medellín, the second-largest city in Colombia and one of its most notorious. The crew visits Queareparaenamorarte (try pronouncing that one), a restaurant that serves traditional Colombian cooking from across the country. Tony gorges himself on a mouth-watering array of foods – a plate of chorizo, rice soup with meat, avocado and plantains, flank steak and tamales de tilapia prepared with coconut, plantains and passion fruit sauce. All the while he’s downing shots of aguardiente, the local Colombian rum, with his hosts. C’mon did you really think we could have an episode of No Reservations without Tony getting drunk?

And we’re just getting started. In a show renowned for its gluttony, Tony’s Medellín visit turns into one of the most gluttonous we’ve probably ever witnessed. Bourdain has breakfast at the “How Yummy” restaurant at the Plaza Minorista market in Medellín. After an appetizer of empanadas, he dines on Calentao, a typical breakfast plate of leftover rice, beans, fried eggs, fried plantains, an arepa covered in cheese AND meat. In what has to be the line of the episode, Tony decides that Calentao “makes the Grand Slam at Denny’s look like a carrot stick.” Heart attack anyone?

Clearly not yet full from his gigantic breakfast, Tony has an even bigger lunch, consisting of a plate with beans, salad, rice, fried eggs, pulled pork, an arepa, chorizo and chicharron. Good god man, please make it stop. It’s almost painful to watch a human being eat this much food. But then again, it is a cooking and eating show – who am I to judge?

Tony wraps up the episode with a visit to the some of Medellín’s rougher barrios for a traditional Sancocho lunch and a little local culture. His hosts are the neighborhood’s residents – people who have experienced a dramatic rise in their standard of living in recent years. What was once the training ground for the Colombian drug cartels and their armies of mercenaries is now home to young adults who have started their own hip-hop crew, a filmmaker and a talented young chef. Thankfully Tony spares us the “kumbaya” moment at the campfire and gets back to what he does best – eating some tasty food and hanging out with his guests.

Bourdain’s examination of Colombia offers the country high marks and an optimistic road to the nation’s future success. It’s the type of country that only Anthony Bourdain does best – a place cluttered with misconceptions waiting to be corrected. And although a “human interest” angle was definitely woven into the episode, No Reservations: Colombia was really all about the food. Tony’s focus on the country’s diverse and delicious cuisine definitely made this a surprising and very enjoyable episode to watch. But more than that, I found myself wanting to go visit Colombia – for any travel show, this is the pinnacle of a successful episode.

Fresh fruit, Costa Rican style

One of my most vivid travel memories was the first time I tasted fruit in Costa Rica. I was staying with a host family, and upon arrival they served me a plate of pineapple as a welcome snack. Nothing could prepare me for that first bite. It was sweet and tangy beyond belief, like a piece of sour candy that had just been plucked straight off the plant. I certainly did not lack for fresh produce growing up in the snowy climes of the Midwest, but your average pineapple in Chicago has traveled thousands of miles to reach the basket sitting on my kitchen counter. Not exactly ideal conditions for ripening and flavor.

After pineapple, I sampled several other interesting produce items like the tamarind, which is often consumed in liquid form and has a flavor I found similar to apple juice. But my favorite fruit snack during my visit was the Costa Rican mango. Other Gadling bloggers like Karen have sung the praises of mangoes before, and I have to agree. The great thing about many Central American countries like Costa Rica is they like to add an extra “kick” to their mango snack. After cutting the fruit into slices, they throw it in a plastic bag and add in a mixture of lime juice, salt and chili powder. The sweet, the sour, the savory and the spicy all rolled into one; there’s no other flavor like it.

Lucky for us North Americans, this delicious mango snack is sold by street vendors in many major urban areas – I recently discovered it for sale here in New York. Or you can make your own – I can’t promise it will taste as good as eating it in the tropics, but I’m sure it’s still delicious.