I’m visiting Bangkok currently, so: definitely custard apples and mangosteens. Snake fruits and guava and the specific type of tangerines they use as “oranges” over here, too. And the green skinned “sweet oranges” which are also awesome. And like all the various types of mangos you can get in Thailand.
Also, I’m taking “available” to mean “purchasable, and ripened mostly on the vine”, because the stuff that gets shipped internationally is picked SUPER unripe just so it doesn’t spoil before sale.
Basically, I would fucking LOVE it if there was a Thai grocery in my city that flagrantly violated the Washington Treaty.
For real though, if you ever get the chance to try a ripe custard apple, they’re absolutely fucking delicious. Can’t recommend it enough.
I rarely see leeks, and when I do, they’re extremely expensive. Such a versatile vegetable that I wish more Americans knew about!
Where do you live where leeks are not common? Speaking for California here, they’re a common grocery store item.
Midwest here, I too can buy leeks any day of the week
Yeah, probably has more do to with proximity to at least a B tier grocery store. If your local grocer is Target, Walmart, or Family Dollar, then you’re only going to have access to the vegetables from Veggietales and bread from a plastic bag.
They grow naturally where I live. Not the giant ones like Farfetch’d carries, but when I was a kid, I loved digging them up in the woods and just eating them raw lol
I think that’s a local thing. My grocer carries them, and they’re always in stock. I line in the Midwest. But I seem to remember eating them a lot in Oregon, too?
Finger limes
Kid named limes: 🫤
No I said fingerprints
To this day I’m amazed they got that one by the censors. (Animaniacs. They’re being detectives. Yakko wears a sherlock hat, orders wakko to do one thing and then tells dot to look for prints. Dot comes back holding Prince out front of her off the ground with both her arms and says “Found him!” Yakko waggles his hands at her and says FINGERprints. Dot says “Ew!” And throws Prince down a laundry chute or a dumbwaiter or something)
Good night everybody
After having açai I wish it was easier to get those than blueberries. They’re basically the same, but they actually have flavor without needing to be turned into a sauce or jam.
If you just want more intensity, maybe use an extract? I have some blueberry extract that I wanted to try adding to coffee. It’s pretty potent.
Something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/OliveNation-Pure-Blueberry-Extract-Ounce/dp/B004E7A33E/
Couple drops go a long way.
I always wanted to try the cashew fruit ever since I discovered it was a fruit.
Allegedly it’s too juicy and fragile to import.
My dad used to pick some up when he took our dog for a walk, and the way I would realize he had done so was by my suddenly feeling queasy due to the smell.
I hope you get the chance to try it sometime, but if you don’t know that it might also not be a bad thing :)
Ive tried the juice which tasted weakly citrusy with a strong nutty flavor. Is that anything like the fresh fruit tastes?
Like I said, the smell alone caused my stomach to turn, so I avoided the fruit. Dad seemed to like it though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Huckleberries. I never see them as a commonly available thing in stores, eaten alongside things like bananas, which sucks, because bananas are some plant grown like a thousand miles away and I can go outside and go gather my own huckleberries if I wanted. It should be really easy, I live in an area where they grow.
So, that, but also just more broadly I kind of think that after learning enough about different regional botany, we’ve both crippled basically every ecosystem with a bunch of invasive species, we’ve crushed the human experience into a very narrow square set of experiences which includes the biodiversity that you can see around wherever you are, and we’ve made food worse. Because we’re not using local plants for our food, you see, we’re just using a bunch of generic ingredients that are sort of unnaturally made out to be universal across entire hemispheres, maybe even across the globe. No regional variation outside of specialty goods, only Mcdonald’s.
The thread’s gonna be against this opinion broadly, I think, but there’s not like, it’s not just the huckleberry, you understand, there’s a lot more out there that you don’t know about, both edible and not.
Huckleberries. I never see them as a commonly available thing in stores,
Visit the Nordics in June-July.
Markets full of them.
Hell, you don’t need to buy any, just walk into any forest and start picking.
First, note that there are a number of plants called the “huckleberry”.
My guess is that @[email protected] has good odds of talking about Vaccinium membranaceum. I’ve had that in Idaho, and consider it to be pretty good.
People pick it in the wild, but it hasn’t been successfully domesticated. Much of the plant lives underground, and it depends on very specific conditions that are hard to reproduce on farms. You can buy some wild-foraged berries, but they’re a pain to get, so available for limited periods of time and relatively-expensive.
I don’t believe that those grow in Europe, and in fact, looking online, the name “huckleberry” only showed up in the Americas, after European colonists misidentified an American berry as the European-native “hurtleberry”. You might be thinking of a different type of berry; googling, I don’t see people talking about huckleberries in the Nordics.
We also have a plant called “huckleberry” around the Bay Area in California, Vaccinium ovatum, which is easier to find in the wild, grows larger and more (albeit smaller) but a lot less impressive, in my experience.
It’s a variety of bilberry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinium_myrtillus
The name huckleberry comes from “hurtleberry” -> “whortleberry”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry#Nomenclature
[1]Cited as “U.S. 1670” in Onions, CT (1933). Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 1 (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.
No-one misidentified anything, per se. Taxonomy in the 1600’s just wasn’t anywhere near what it is today, and you’d be well in your rights calling the berry with the same name, just like I’m sure you call apples apples instead of going by the variety of subspecies. (And “apple” used to even mean even wider set of fruits. That’s where the word for “orange” here in the Nordics comes from, “Appelsin” = “Chinese Apple”)
Apricots. They’re available, but they’re always shitty.
I’d kill for apricots like you can get in the EU. Cheaper than here and they were delicious, not mealy and bland.
Agree. Good apricots are elusive. I have had them but 99% of the time they go straight from underripe to mealy.
I’d love it if Stephen Hawking and Freddy Mercury were alive again
rimshot
Fiddleheads
Depends where you live and if you know where to look. There are plenty near places I have lived. Usually near streams.
You can’t import yuzu fruits or plants. All the yuzu in the US is descended from the 100 original plants imported before it was made illegal.
But really, I want soft cheeses…
We can get yuzu fruit here (Florida) but couldn’t get the seeds to sprout, not sure how the trees are propagated. Anyway - the fruit is underwhelming, the zest is divine, I made a yuzu kosho, it is delicious.
Almost all fruit trees are clones. You’d need a cutting.
Google says they taste like a mix of lemon, orange and grapefruit. Is that accurate?
I’ve had it here in Europe.
Personally, I think it tastes like a lemon that went bad. Like, kind of an uncanny valley thing. It’s close enough for me to think it’s one thing but far enough away from me to know it is definitely not what I want.
More like lemon-lime-pomelo, but WDIY.
Sort of Meyer lemon with lime zest? The ones I got were not juicy at all, and what juice they had, I would prefer lime. But the zest of the yuzu is amazing, I do like it. You can buy yuzu sake, or a yuzu soda, to taste the flavor. Yuzu kosho is very different, savory and spicy, i made mine with grated fresh jalapenos and fermented it, absolutely divine.
Fruits from the genus Garcinia (mangosteen, achacha, and related). They’re supposedly some of the best tasting fruit ever, but very hard to find in the US aside from specialty growers in Cali or Miami.
the Gros Michel banana. I never had the chance to try one before they were wiped out.
edit: and the Hua Moa banana, because it looks silly
I’ll tack on apple bananas. They’re tiny and taste like an apple and a banana had babies.
Apple bananas are freaking amazing. I’m always so happy when we score some at the Asian grocery. That little pop of acidity makes all the difference.
The Gros Michel isn’t fully extinct, you can still buy them as delicacies. But from what I’ve heard they aren’t that great, just different to the Cavendish
Persimmons. I know they’re available at least in the bay area because I had them when I lived there briefly, but have never found them in my regular home in the pacific northwest. I also don’t remember them as a kid growing up in Tennessee.
We have persimmons in Michigan
Those are very late season fruit. I wasn’t aware they weren’t available up north. Look for them starting in October, I think.
I get them in Texas from the Korean market. I don’t know that they’re available year round though.
I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find any via Asian markets in the Pacific Northwest.
Oooh I haven’t checked there, thank you!
I keep thinking back to this. I believe persimmons are in season in the fall, so if you don’t find them now, go back in a few months and you should have better luck.
Note that there are two different cultivars I’ve seen sold in the Bay Area.
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Fuyu. These are typically eaten crunchy (and are so even when ripe), like an apple. They look kind of like a tomato, are short and wide.
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Hachiya. There are very soft, almost a jell-o consistency, when ripe, and are very fragile. My dad used to grow them in his backyard.
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Durians
They’re readily available in the LA area. You just need to visit an asian specialty market.
Best I can do is fart on a cantaloupe. Take it or leave it.
Green curry should have Thai eggplant yet I can only get it with that from one Thai restaurant I know
I’ve found Thai eggplant at 99 Ranch stores.
