Cornucopia

It’s kind of funny, that after so many years in India, there are still fruits I haven’t tried - lots of them! I just had my first bite of jackfruit and the very first encounter with fresh dates.

For me, dates were a big part of all the “African adventure” type books – crossing the dessert on camel’s back, eating nothing but dry dates, drinking nothing but water from the leather pouch – that sort of thing. But the fresh dates… well, that’s the whole other story. To make yet another literary/childhood reference, in Chronicles of Narnia, there was one particular story that came back to me after eating them. A boy, visiting Narnia of the day of its creation, planted a toffee that grew into a toffee tree, full of juicy toffee fruits – that’s how fresh dates taste like.

Juicy toffies aside, our local market is a true cornucopia these days. All the colors, textures, and smells are simply mouthwatering! And, it just so happens, it gives me a perfect excuse for baking all the delicious fruity cakes!

Apricot yogurt cake

300 g flour

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1 egg

½- ¾ cup sugar (set 2-3 spoons aside)

100 ml oil

2 tsp lemon juice

300 g thick yogurt (like Greek yogurt or dahi)

10-12 apricots – halved

Mix flour and baking soda and set aside.

Beat egg with sugar until light and fluffy. Add oil and lemon juice and whisk together.
Add yogurt and mix. Add flour and mix. Place halved apricots (cut side up) and sprinkle remaining sugar over the fruits. Bake in 160 degrees till golden brown (45-55 min). Sprinkle with powdered sugar.
It's simply to die for!

and..

...the monsoon is here!

And with every monsoon comes this unbelievably lush, well, everything. In just a couple short days, from dry and nearly dead, all the trees, bushes and flowers turn into the essence of life. 

Another thing that comes with the monsoon is mango season. And jackfruit season. And, in general, fruit season.

With four mango trees in our garden, I can’t look at this fruit anymore, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a very valuable lesson in the process. Like the fact that I don’t know squat about fruit trees. Once upon a time, in Europe, things were much easier. Fruits grew on the trees until they were ripe and ready to be eaten, in India, however, it’s a different story. They still grow on trees, but apparently they need a change of scenery to ripen. Chikoos, for example, need good 7-10 days of lying around to change from stone-hard to melt in your mouth. Same with mangoes, they will only turn yellow or red (depending on the kind) after some solid home time. Left on the tree they will only blush unless they are eaten by some impatient animals.

This morning I was confronted by the whole bunch on tiny little green bananas, just sitting next to the kitchen stairs and I suddenly got very nostalgic about all the boring and uncomplicated European fruits.

With that said, I also found out that monsoon is the season for plums and peaches, apricots and cherries, and even pears, but they only grow in some very well hidden location, and definitively not in Goa.
With that said, I need some time to figure out what to do with my new fruity houseguests!

..and P.S. I decided to dig up my poor, halfdead basil and put it in pots and it worked like a magic trick!