Carambola: Star-Fruit with a mouthful of flavors
Hey guys I am back again with my rare food search and this time I am going to give you a very rare, tropical fruits called as Carambola or Chinese Star-fruit or Coromandel gooseberry. This fruit is called as star-fruit because of its star shape and is a native fruit of Sri Lanka and Moluccas, but it is extensively grown in Southeast Asia, Brazil, Ghana, Guyana, South Florida and Hawaii. The reason why it grows well in some parts of American continent is because it thrives well in warm climate. The color of this fruit varies from golden yellow to the greenish color of gooseberry. There are two varieties of star-fruit is the tart one and sweet one. The tart one has narrowly spaced ribs and the sweet star-fruit has thick ribs and more fleshy in nature. Apart from these two varieties there are seven other cultivars of the same fruit Arkin, B-2,B-10, B-16, B-17, Dah Pon, Demak, Fwang Tung, Golden Star, Hew-1, Kary, Maha, Mih Tao, Newcomb, Sri Kembangan, Star King, Tean Ma, and Thayer. This fruit is available from July through February.
The flavor difference between tart and the sweet fruit is very narrow as the sweet fruit also has a bit of tartness. The fruits are crunchy to fleshy and taste between pineapple, grapes and lemon. Star fruit should be purchased when firm, shiny and one with a uniform color, you can leave the fruits in room temperature to ripen, as it is preferable to buy one which is already ripe. At room temperature these fruits can be kept up to two days or kept unwashed in a sealable plastic bag up to a week. This fruit need not be peeled, but needs to be washed properly before eating.
If you are planning to store it for a week then make it a point to finish it in a week, by getting it pickled, adding to fruit salads, use it in tarts, chutneys, you can add the dried star-fruit in preserves and sauces, for garnishing chicken, pork, fishes and other meat dishes, garnishing beverages, as addition to smoothies and also as a tangy mix to your gravies.
But there is also the bad side to star-fruit is that it leads to fruit poisoning in patients suffering from renal failure. For Carambola rcipes go to Sarasota
