Trying different foods is something I enjoy very much. It may come from my mother who was an adventurous cook - especially for the times (1940-50). I've eaten a lot of unusual foods, some I liked and some I didn't. There are a few things I have not been willing to try, yet! One is snails, no matter how much garlic and butter there is I just can't quite slip the little guys into my mouth. I also passed on a fat white roasted grub in the Australian outback.
However, I have recently eated these unusual fruits.
On the left is hoshigaki, a Japanese treat I have known about for years, but have rarely eaten. They are grown in California's Central Valley and this year I found them for sale on the Internet. Hoshigaki are dried Hachiya persimmons that have been slowly massaged daily for a month to soften them and bring their natural sugars to the surface as a fine white powder that you can see above. They are eaten as is and have a moderately sweet taste and a chewy texture. I think they are delicious.
On the right are freeze dried mangosteens which I am trying for the first time. Grown in Thailand we have not seen them in the USA due to fear of importing new kinds of fruit flies. They are also available as juice which is imported already prepared. The white coating is the natural sugar that surfaces in the freeze drying process. They are sweet and tart at the same time - in fact, sort of like those candies called sweet tarts, if I remember correctly - I haven't eaten those in decades. They are also sort of crunchy, like cheese puffs! I found the mangosteens at Trader Joe's and I will buy them again. A 1.5 ounce bag has 170 calories and supplies 3 grams of fiber.
In the middle is a thimble to give you an idea of size!
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