{"id":25403,"date":"2024-04-13T03:16:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-13T03:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/13\/new-zealanders-are-crazy-for-this-fruit-its-not-the-kiwi\/"},"modified":"2024-04-13T03:16:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T03:16:42","slug":"new-zealanders-are-crazy-for-this-fruit-its-not-the-kiwi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/13\/new-zealanders-are-crazy-for-this-fruit-its-not-the-kiwi\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealanders Are Crazy for This Fruit. It\u2019s Not the Kiwi."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/11\/world\/00nz-feijoa-promo\/00nz-feijoa1-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"New Zealanders Are Crazy for This Fruit. It\u2019s Not the Kiwi.\" title=\"New Zealanders Are Crazy for This Fruit. It\u2019s Not the Kiwi.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Autumn in New Zealand heralds the arrival of a green, egg-size fruit that falls off trees in such abundance that it is often given to neighbors and colleagues by the bucket or even the wheelbarrow load. Only in cases of extreme desperation do people buy any.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The fresh fruit, whose flesh is gritty, jellylike and cream-colored, is used in muffins, cakes, jams and smoothies, and it begins appearing on high-end menus each March \u2014 the start of fall in the Southern Hemisphere. Off-season, it is found in food and drink as varied as juices and wine, yogurt and kombucha, and chocolate and popcorn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This ubiquitous fruit is the feijoa (pronounced fee-jo-ah). Known in the United States as the pineapple guava, it was first brought to New Zealand from South America via France and California in the early 1900s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Its tangy taste is hard to describe, even for die-hard fans. But what is easy to pinpoint is that like the kiwi fruit, which originated in China, and the kiwi, a native bird, the feijoa has become for many here a quintessential symbol of New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as the country is known in the Indigenous Maori language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cEven though it isn\u2019t from Aotearoa, it\u2019s definitely something that I associate with the Aotearoa modern <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/teara.govt.nz\/en\/artwork\/23447\/pataka\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">pataka<\/a>, the modern food pantry,\u201d said Monique Fiso, a chef with Maori and Samoan ancestry who worked in top New York restaurants for more than five years. Now back in New Zealand, she is a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/06\/t-magazine\/polynesian-cuisine.html\" title=\"\">pioneer of modern Polynesian cuisine<\/a> and often serves feijoas to her customers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s certainly one of my favorite fruits to work with, especially when we\u2019re making sorbets, because it\u2019s so refreshing,\u201d she said. \u201cFeijoas have a lot of versatility \u2014 you can bake with them, you can make ice cream with them, you can make jam with them. And they have a place with savory as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Not every New Zealander loves feijoas, she cautioned. Sometimes customers will specify \u201cjust no feijoa\u201d when they make reservations. It is a sentiment she cannot understand. \u201cI find that a bit crazy,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m like, what\u2019s your issue? They\u2019re the greatest fruits ever!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For fans, nothing can quite match the autumnal experience of eating an entire bucket of the freshly fallen fruit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cYou can cut it in half and eat it with a spoon, or you can just bite it open with your teeth and suck the contents out,\u201d David Farrier, a New Zealand filmmaker and journalist who lives in Los Angeles, said somewhat wistfully.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He has often tried to explain feijoas to mystified Americans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI say it\u2019s about the size of an egg \u2014 just imagine a green chicken egg with a little hat on top,\u201d he said. \u201cThe flavor? Honestly, it tastes like feijoa. And if you haven\u2019t had a feijoa then you\u2019re missing out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">People have compared feijoas to guavas (a distant relative) and to a mixture of pineapple and strawberry. Long before the craft-beer revolution, a 1912 U.S. newspaper article declared: \u201cHe who drinks beer, thinks beer. But he who eats pineapple guava thinks of pineapple, raspberries and banana, all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In New Zealand, though, one might drink beer and think feijoas. Last year, a feijoa-flavored sour ale, 8 Wired\u2019s Wild Feijoa 2022, beat more than 800 other brews to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theshout.co.nz\/new-zealand-beer-awards-winners-announced\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">win the top prize<\/a> at the national beer awards. Its brewer, Soren Eriksen, is originally from Denmark, but has lived in New Zealand for nearly two decades. He took quickly to feijoas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI like them with the skin and everything,\u201d he said, adding that the tangy feijoa skins gave his award-winning Belgian-style lambic beer its special taste. \u201cI wanted to make something that was traditional, but also uniquely Kiwi.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Feijoas originated in Uruguay, the southern highlands of Brazil and a corner of northern Argentina. But they thrive across most of New Zealand, growing easily with little care and facing few pests, and they quickly found their way into local diets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rohan Bicknell, an Australian who imports and exports fruits and vegetables, has a front-row seat to the feijoa mania. He accidentally discovered feijoas in 2013, when a shortage of passion fruit in his home country forced him to order some from New Zealand. The suppliers threw in a few hundred kilograms of feijoas as well. Mr. Bicknell thought they were delicious, and they sold out in a week, snapped up by homesick New Zealand expatriates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThey become like a kid,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes you have to listen to their childhood stories for about an hour. But it puts a smile on your face, even if you do hear it 200 times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Bicknell now has 32 feijoa trees growing in his Brisbane backyard, a 1,000-tree feijoa orchard in the south Queensland highlands, and an online store called Feijoa Addiction that caters mostly to the many New Zealanders living in Australia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">People of few other countries have quite the same level of feeling for a fruit, he said. \u201cMalaysians and durians and Kiwis and feijoas are probably on the same strength of addiction,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe Indians and mangoes.\u201d Australians are fond of mulberries, \u201cbut the connection is nowhere near as strong as between a feijoa and a person from New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Feijoas also evoke a special kinship, said Charlotte Muru-Lanning, a writer from Auckland. Because they do not store well, and they are so abundant, at a certain point in the season people start giving them away. Last year, she laid them out in a box on the sidewalk in front of her house with a little sign saying \u201cfree feijoas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That aspect of feijoas makes them a vessel for the Maori concept of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/maoridictionary.co.nz\/word\/12711\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">whakawhanaungatanga<\/a> \u2014 building and strengthening relationships with those around you, said Ms. Muru-Lanning, who is Maori. If you do not have a feijoa tree, it is the perfect excuse to get to know a neighbor who has one. If you have lots, you can show you care for others by sharing the fruit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI would feel like something has gone really wrong if I\u2019m living in this country and have to buy feijoas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/12\/world\/australia\/new-zealand-feioja-kiwis.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autumn in New Zealand heralds the arrival of a green, egg-size fruit that falls off trees in such abundance that it is often given to neighbors and colleagues by the bucket or even the wheelbarrow load. Only in cases of extreme desperation do people buy any. The fresh fruit, whose flesh is gritty, jellylike and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/11\/world\/00nz-feijoa-promo\/00nz-feijoa1-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3263,30462,30469,30468],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25403"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25405,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25403\/revisions\/25405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}