The months of May through August (or what used to be known as the dry season in Indonesia before climate became quite unpredictable worldwide) bring a certain delight for markisa (passion fruit in English, maracuja in Portuguese, maracuya in Spanish) lovers. I have only become recently addicted to markisa, but I have mostly been absorbed by the beauty of this fruit's structure and texture - which very much heightened the experience of eating this tangy and juicy fruit.
I enjoy cracking the hard outer shell, carefully turning the fruit around its cross section until the brown-dotted-yellow cracks, revealing an inner white and soft shell with the thickness and texture slightly denser of a cotton square. The spongy second shell needs a bit of a tension, instead of a compression, to rip open, which action most likely burst the third thin, translucent, elastic inner layer membrane. Hundreds of soft black seeds clung onto tiny clasps that are embedded onto the inner side of the membrane, organized neatly along three columns that run across the long section, from the tip to the bottom of the fruit. The space in between the three columns is exactly the lengths of two pulps. The black seeds are dulled by their transparent flesh casing, all carefully tugging themselves onto the clasps along the three columns, filling in completely the space within the ovoid fruit.
The fruit is a biological marvel that reminds me of D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form. And although I have never seen markisa flower or plant, it looks very exotic on pictures.
Here is a more technically accurate description of the fruit:
The nearly round or ovoid fruit, 1 1/2 to 3 in (4-7.5 cm) wide, has a tough rind, smooth, waxy, ranging in hue from dark-purple with faint, fine white specks, to light-yellow or pumpkin-color. It is 1/8 in (3 mm) thick, adhering to a 1/4 in (6 mm) layer of white pith. Within is a cavity more or less filled with an aromatic mass of double-walled, membranous sacs filled with orange-colored, pulpy juice and as many as 250 small, hard, dark-brown or black, pitted seeds. The flavor is appealing, musky, guava-like, subacid to acid.Maybe I just miss a bit of an architectural talk :)
2 comments:
i've only recently started eating markisa also. u'r right it's a really interestingly engineered fruit! :)
I've been enjoying markisa since a long time ago. Of course here in Indonesia they're always readily available in concentrated syrup. As of the fruit itself, I stumble upon markisa fruit for the first time during my vacation to Bali in 2001. Since then from time to time I spot this fruit specially in hotels' buffet bar.
Not until recently I'm intriqued to find out how's the passion fruit flower looks like.
And then I found out that I used to take a picture of this exotic looking flower in my sister's front porch in Calif. back in 2005, not knowing that it is the flower of markisa fruit.
Last month I saw a similar flower in Ciawi area and took a picture of it, emailed it to my sister.
She said that there are several varieties of Passion fruit flowers and most of them are not edible when they produce fruit. She sent me back a picture of a passion fruit flower/plant that grows in her backyard and the one bear edible fruit. The one in the front porch produce inedible fruit.
Very interesting... looking at images of 3 similar flowers with unique structures. The one shown on this page seems to be the one that bear inedible fruit because looks identical with the one at my sister's porch.
The one with edible fruit got much longer 'purple hair' inside the petals.
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