Testing a New Fruit: Cherimoya

It's official: with the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shevat (or the New Year of the Trees) - when it is customary to try a new, eventually exotic fruit - in less than a month, I am looking for interesting fruits to add to an amazing fruit salad I can't wait to share on the blog. Actually, I am open for even two salads, if my testing is going well. 

For a long time, I wanted to test and taste cherimoya, which is the star of this blog post, one from a longer series dedicated to exotic - at least for the Europeans - fruits.

Heart-shaped and as big as a middle-sized grapefruit, cherimoya is originally from Southern Ecuador and Northern Peru. Mark Twain, both a gourmet and a traveller around the world, called it 'deliciousness itself'. The skin and the seeds are not edible. Cutting it is not that easy, as the sking is pretty hard and may present resistance to a less sharper knife. Rich in Vitamin C and B, it has a lemon smell and a milky white pulp.  

My personal experience with this fruit was not outstanding. All the reviews and food stories I've read kept telling that it tastes as a combination between pineapple, raspberries and strawberries. No trace of it in my fruit. It tasted rather as a (very) green apple. For me, it looks like a great fit in a fruit salad with many very sweet fruits - such as bananas or mangoes, but individually, it did not present for me a special flavour that I would rather leave as the main element in a salad or cocktail in order to build around it with complimentary flavors. It might be that I've been unlucky and found a bad fruit and I would love to keep trying different fruits - eventually, from another country of origin - but until now, I may not consider cherimoya for any further involvement in my foodie plans.