Paloquemao--and fruits!

[asakiyume]

While we were in Bogotá, we went to Paloquemao, a giant produce-and-other-things market. It's very popular as a tourist destination with colombianos as well as foreigners--one night when we turned on the TV, they were visiting there.

We went there, though, because it was one of the locations that La Niña was shot. The parents of Victor, one of the young medical students in the show, work there.

Apparently the way most people get to Paloquemao is to take a taxi or a bus, but we walked. And let me tell you, people who go by taxi or bus miss passing through the restaurant-supply district of Bogotá, where there's shopfront after shopfront filled with coffee makers or refrigerators or empty display shelves. A display of display shelves. And after that, the prostitute district. I've probably crossed paths with prostitutes in my life without realizing it, and lots of the women I've worked with at the jail have been sex workers at one time or another, but I've never had the experience of walking by barely clad women just, y'know, hanging around, literally, on street corners (and lining up all down the side streets), just. Waiting. So that was interesting.

But then at last we were at Paloquemao, where you can see beautiful huge displays of fruit like **this**



DO YOU SEE THE MANGOSTEENS FRONT AND CENTER?? DO YOU? I have wanted to taste a mangosteen since intertribal wrote about them years ago. I thought I might get a chance in East Timor, but no. Nor in Florida. But that day in Paloquemao? YES.

It was every bit as delicious as I had hoped. I bought a pound, and we ate them during the rest of our stay.




In the first photo, do you see the little orange things in the box diagonally below the strawberries? Those are uchuvas. They're a kind of ground-cherry-like thing, in the nightshade family, very delicious (sweet and tart), and our hotel makes its own uchuva jam (more like a compote) that you can have on toast or bread in the morning. Señora Lucy kindly let me watch her making it:



I didn't think I'd get to have them again until we went back to Colombia, but our first day home, when I went to Stop & Shop, THERE THEY WERE! Sold as "golden berries" (but apparently also known in this country as "Cape gooseberries), product of Colombia. So I've been making uchuva jam of my own.



Other fruits we experienced in juice form: guanabana, which apparently has the English name of soursop, and lulo, which doesn't have an English name. Wikipedia tells me that the name lulo comes from the Quecha language, which is pretty cool. Juices from both these fruits are **fabulous**. Guanabanas are huge, but one lulo is only about the size of an orange, and yet ground up and added to either water or milk (we had it with water), that one lulo makes an intensely flavorful two-and-a-half glasses.

guanabana

(image source)

lulo

(source: wikipedia)

And a final cool fruit juice we had was tomate de arbol ("tree tomato," but it's not really a tomato)


(image source)

This isn't Paloquemao; this is a special Friday market that happened in Plaza Bolivár, but in this photo you can see lulos, in the wooden box above the plantains, and tomates de arbole on the far left, above more uchuvas



To return to Paloquemao: it wasn't all fruits. It was also eggs.



And also herbs, and flowers, and meats--and also eateries. We went got invited into one and had the largest piece of salmon we'd ever seen on a plate before. Wakanomori took a picture:




We told the woman working there that we'd come to Paloquemao because of La Niña, and she said she'd had her photo taken with the actor who played Victor when they were filming. "Really?!!" we said, stars in our eyes. "Can we see?" So when she got a moment, she brought out her cell phone and showed us! We had come there because of the show, and lo and behold, we met someone with a connection with the show. It was great. "Now you'll always remember coming here," she remarked. Truth!

Here's looking in at the eatery.



We sat facing outward, though, so we could watch what was going on. Wakanomori got this picture of people arriving to set up their stall:



PS: Ugh, as I'm posting this, it looks like Duque has won Colombia's election. We were there for round one of the election. He wants to renegotiate parts of the peace deal with the FARC. Well... that's what was predicted to happen, so...

Comments

[sovay]

DO YOU SEE THE MANGOSTEENS FRONT AND CENTER?? DO YOU?

They are beautiful mangosteens!

Rest of the fruit doesn't look bad, either. I've had guanabanas, but I don't think lulos or tomates de arbol.

[asakiyume]

I hope one day you are able to have juice made with either one, because they are wonderful. I'm hopeful about being able to get guanabana at, say, a Puerto Rican market.

[khiemtran]

Thanks for sharing! I've had the guanabana before (but I know it as "custard apple"), but not the others. It also seems odd that so much of what we eat belongs to the deadly nightshade family (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, etc).

[asakiyume]

It's definitely interesting about the nightshades! Peppers, too, are in that family (by which I mean things like hot peppers and green peppers, not black-pepper-the-spice). Seems like the New World half of the Columbian exchange was basically the gift of the edible nightshades. Oh: and maize. Every time I hear about the nightshade family, I remember reading about the macrobiotic diet, which apparently has people avoid things in that family. Seems like a bad deal.

[khiemtran]

Yes, I think I would struggle with that one. I did get to try black nightshade berries when we did a weed foraging course. They tasted vaguely of tomatoes.

[asakiyume]

Not deadly, clearly!

[khiemtran]

Not so far! You do still need to be able to tell the difference between black and deadly nightshade, which I don't think I'd be confident enough to do by myself.

[amaebi]

Please tell about the mangosteen flavour?

Tree tomatoes are the favourite fruits of my adoptive brother Erick, who grew up half in Ecuador, half in New York City.

[asakiyume]

Forgive me for going at this answer slantwise, but: it has the consistency of lychee (which it sort of looks like inside, yes?) but whereas lychee is a pretty delicate, floral sort of flavor, the mangosteen had a really rich, full, many-notes type of flavor. For me, mangoes and peaches are the fruits I already know that fit that bill. But it wasn't so much that it tasted like those two, any more than they taste like each other--just that it was a similar *wow FRUIT* sort of experience. Whereas (for comparison-extrapolation) while I like lychees a lot, they're not quite that explosion in your mouth. But consistency matters so much! So, a consistency like a lychee, but a flavor experience like a very flavorful soft fruit.

[amaebi]

That's extremely helpful and lust-provoking-- thanks!

I think that descriptions of flavour always have to be by way of comparison with smells or other tastes. Though other comparisons can be kind of illuminating. ("It was like chewing on a brick. A brick made of old boots.")

[petrichor_pirate]

This was going to be my question too! Thank you for describing it!

[asakiyume]

My pleasure

[threemeninaboat]

We get ground cherries here in the asian market and you can buy the plants at the plant store. I grew them one year and they were awesome.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, every now and then I see them here too--definitely birds of a feather (or um... fruits of a papery husk)!

[sartorias]

Blargh on Columbia's election.

Prostitutes are common along Sunset BLVD, at least they were in the day. Women on Sunset, kink on Hollywood BLVD, men on Santa Monica.

In Vienna, back in the day, the prostitutes yell out at passing men. Many times they'd call out to the guy I was dating, telling him in the local patois to dump me and have a better time with them!

[asakiyume]

Trying to pinch a guy when he's already with someone is pretty low! And not to put too fine a point on it, but you usually don't have to pay your girlfriend for time spent together!

Oh, baby, it's alright now, you ain't gotta flaunt for me
If we go and touch, you can still touch my love, it's free (love that song)

[sartorias]

Yeah, I was pretty shocked (I was twenty, and from a quiet blue collar neighborhood under the flight path of LAX) but I got used to it. I figured that social finesse was not a big part of sex for sale. And the girls rarely harassed me when I left alone late at night from the b.f.'s apt. There were a few anti-American comments, but those I got anywhere anytime.

[cmcmck]

Ooh yum!

So much fruit to appeal to a fruit bat! :o)

[asakiyume]

They must be **very** happy in Colombia.

[cgbookcat1]

Oooh, mangosteen look and sound delicious! As do guanabana and lulo -- and how much of the ucheva is required for ucheva jam? Are you willing to share Lucy's technique?

[asakiyume]

She already had them in that pot with some amount of sugar, when I got there, so I've been experimenting with online recipes. The key ingredients are the uchuvas, water, and sugar, but--as always--it's the proportions that are a killer. The sugar can vary, depending on the recipe, from about a cup per cup of uchuvas to just a few tablespoons per cup. And then the water is enough for them to be just covered.

My experience with jams in this country leads me to believe that one could do without the water altogether and just cook them in their own juice, plus an amount of sugar--but that would make something more jamlike and less compote-like, but what Señora Lucy made was more like a compote... so for that reason I've been cooking with the extra water and dithering on the sugar. The last batch I made I used two cups of uchuvas and almost a cup of sugar (so half as much as the one-to-one ratio but much more than just a couple of tablespoons). It's the right consistency and flavor! (You have to let it stew for about half an hour.)

[cgbookcat1]

Thanks, I will see if I can find any of these in my area.

[pameladean]

There is a mangosteen theme on my reading page recently!

My first thought, looking at the photo of the fruit, was that it was very weird. Then I wondered if it was objectively any weirder than fruits with which I was more familiar. It is certainly much less weird than a pomegranate, and really no stranger than an orange.

I am really enjoying your trip reports. I feel fortunate to know some people who are better at enjoying things than I am, so that in some ways it's better for me to read their reports than to have the experience myself. You are definitely one of those people.

P.

[asakiyume]

I think I understand what you mean. I feel the same way--only with a different set of tolerances. My husband would try many more situations than I'm comfortable in, and indeed, that came up--briefly--twice on the trip (both times ending satisfactorily all around, with the help of a little local intervention--I'll write about that in another entry).

And you do enjoy lots of things very intensely, or at least convey the experiences intensely: relating to the natural work, birds, animals, grasses, the ways of the sky. I enjoy reading those posts of yours very much.

(And yeah, funny that Rachel should post about her experiences with a mangosteen just a few days ago!)

[rimturse]

Heeeh, I used to eat a lot of mangosteens when visiting family in Malaysia. We can sometimes get them here in the bigger supermarkets, but they're much nicer when they're all fresh.

[asakiyume]

So much fruit is only really good fresh! I was just talking to a friend who was saying she never understood the appeal of mangoes until she had a fresh one in Florida.

[rimturse]

Oh definitely! We sometimes buy mangos and it's a hit and miss, as in - either it's this sour thing or it's okay, but nothing like the fresh ones. It's even worse with papayas, they just don't travel well. I used to get so excited when finding one in the stores, but they're absolutely tasteless.

We get the same reactions with fresh strawberries. My aunt pays a fortune for them in Malaysia and they taste nothing like the ones from our garden. :)

[minoanmiss]

I love your photoessays, and the fruit made me nostalgic. I remember soursop from Jamaica.

I went to Stop & Shop, THERE THEY WERE! Sold as "golden berries" (but apparently also known in this country as "Cape gooseberries), product of Colombia.

Yay! I was just about to tell you this, as my roommate bought me a box as a treat.

[asakiyume]

I was so surprised and delighted by the uchuvas/golden berries at Stop & Shop!

Fruit really is wonderful. And there are so many **more** fruits than I ever dreamed of!

[umadoshi]

So much amazing fruit in the world...!

The only time I've had mangosteen was the first time (of two) that I was in Hawai'i, and I remember it dearly.

[asakiyume]

I hope you get to have one again at some point!

[st_martin_a]

Esa comida parece deliciosa.
No tenemos comida como esa en inglatera.

[asakiyume]

o en los estados unidos tampoco!

[zyzyly]

I lknow i've eaten mangosteen before, but can't remember where. I love your fruit pictures! One of my favorite things when traveling is to go into markets and see what they are selling.

[asakiyume]

Absolutely. I love markets in this country too!