dragon fruit ???: © .kaishin. 2009.

Southern China has an abundance of fruit, and many exotic ones. These are called Dragon Fruit, a fruit of a variety of cactus. It’s flesh is similar to a kiwi, but can tend to be bland. I’ve heard that the Red variety can be better, but have yet to find one here. To eat the fruit, you pare the top skin layer off, and either keep the pink outer flesh or peel that off, totally up to you, then slice. Or you can cut in half, and eat it with a spoon ;) Here I’ve peeled all off and used a bit of the pink middle layer as garnish, since it’s such a pretty shade of pink.

My experience so far, is that 2 out of 10 I’ve tried is fairly bland or light in flavour. When it is sweet, it’s quite nice, though better served slightly chilled. Regardless of it’s flavour or lack there of, it’s nice in salads as it looks exotic and since is light in flavour, does nicely with a orange juice based vinegarette or maybe even a raspberry lemon one. It’s texture is similar to a kiwi fruit.

Today I had one that was mostly bland only the center was a bit sweet, so I just drizzled some honey and lemon juice on it and it was lovely :)

For more information about the fruit, see the wikipedia entry here.