Pawpaws - Asimina triloba
Ok, so, like, it’s currently mid-September, and the pawpaws are ripe. I’m always surprised at how many people don’t even know these things exist. I think they’re probably the largest and one of the tastiest native eastern north American fruits. The general ignorance is probably due to their absence on the market. I guess they probably don’t ship or keep well. Perhaps they show up at farmers’ markets, I don’t know.
If you don’t know about them either, it’s like this:
The pawpaw is a tallish slim understory tree that, at least around
here, prefers woods at the bottoms of hills and in bottomland/river
areas. It has a distinctive 3-lobed wine-purple flower (hence triloba)
and big, alternate, tropical-looking leaves. In fact, is the
northernmost outrider of the Annonaceae, a family of almost exclusively
tropical plants including the soursop/guanabana, cherimoya, and ylang
ylang. The fruit is sort of exotic too, the sort of flavor that one
wouldn’t otherwise expect to encounter in the American Midwest. The
flavor/fragrance is sort of reminiscent of a mixture of artificial
banana flavor, mango, bubblegum, and melon. The ripe fruit has a
squishy texture, like custard or an extra-mucilaginous, overripe
banana.
They’re good by themselves, and as an ingredient in other things. There’s a page of pawpaw recipes here. We made a blenderful of pawpaw smoothie, and it was good. The mucilaginous nature of the fruit thickens it well.
-CH