Dragon Fruit

My family and I were walking around Chinatown the other day and came across a very beautiful yet strange looking fruit. It looked like this:
This fruit is called Dragon fruit but is also known as the strawberry pear. After looking at it and tasting it I can see why it might have both names. The scaly protrusions coming from the pinkish flesh of the fruit do remind me of a dragon while the flesh of the fruit, speckled with tiny seeds (like a strawberry) is very pear-like in flavor.

After my dad brought this strange fruit home I then had the task of figuring out what to do with it. After reading about Dragon fruit online and looking at pictures of the speckled flesh I couldn’t help but be reminded of the vanilla bean in crème brulee (it's all in the black speckles.) I decided that my goal would be to make a dragon fruit custard and then brulee it.

To make the custard I scooped the flesh out of the dragon fruit and pureed it with some Grand Marnier and honey. I then tasted it and thought that it needed a little something else. At once I thought about the amazing saffron panna cotta I had at Babbo and decided to add saffron and a pinch of salt to the puree. After settling on the flavor profile I added some egg yolks and a bit of milk (there was no cream and I was too lazy to go to the store) to the mixture so that upon baking, the custard would have some sort of form. Finally I set the custard in molds and baked them in a 300 degree oven for an hour.

When it came time to finish the dessert I took my mold and expected the custard to come out in a nice neat circle… It came out looking like this:



I then found an open circle for shaping and made a custard circle on the plate. I covered the custard with rose sugar (which I would later blowtorch to make the crust) and spread dried rose petals (from the sugar) around the plate. To finish the dish, I reduced some pickling liquid I had made a couple of days before to pickle lychees. The sauce consisted of vinegar, sugar, lemon zest, saffron and pink peppercorns. The lemonyness of the sauce did well to cut some of the sweetness of the brulee while the saffron complimented the flavors of the custard.



In the end I had a good time experimenting with something I had no previous knowledge about. I think I’m going to go spend some more time wandering around Chinatown seeing what weird produce I can pick up and transform into something tasty.


Happy weekend everyone