Cherries

 

Prunus avium
Family: Rosaceae

Description & storage
Cherry: small soft round fruit, red or black when ripe, containing a stone.
Cherries always have to be picked ripe. They do not ripe well after they have been picked. You can keep cherries for one to three days.

Tree / shrub
The cherry tree grows upto 9 m.

Short histotory
Cherries are native in Europe.

Use
Cherries taste best consumed "warm" from the tree. Often jelly is made because they can't be stored. Cherries can be frozen but you better remove the stones first.

Types and family
There are red, black and yellow cherries.

Other peculiar characteristics

-Nutrition Facts

-Selection

-Recipes

-Acidity

Pomegranate

 

-Thick-skinned round fruit which, when ripe, has a reddish centre full of large juicy seeds.

-This fruit is sold yellow-red and is ripe when it is red-brown.

-You can keep it several weeks at room-temperature or in the refrigerator.

-Watch out for stains, they are hard to remove.

-Grenadine is made out of pomegranates.

-The most delicious type of pomegranate comes from Iraq.

-Contains much vitamin C, B and much iron.

-Nutrition Facts

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Kiwis

 

-Small oval fruits with a thin brown skin, soft green flesh and black seeds.

-Kiwis are originally from China and were improved in New Zealand

-Kiwis contain a protein-splitting enzyme. Other fruit that contains this enzyme are fresh papaya, pineapple and babaco. This substance makes the fruit easy to digest and fried together with meat it makes it more tender. If you put this fruit in dairy products it will make them watery. If the fruit is cooked like all canned and other processed fruit this enzyme is no longer active.

-Kiwis are a subtropical and not a tropical fruit. Therefore it is best to store them in the fridge.

-To make them ripe faster you can keep them in a closed plastic bag together with an apple, pear or banana. These fruits excrete ethylene gas which fastens the riping of kiwis and avocadoes.

-Nutrition Facts

-Selection

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-Acidity

Bananas

 

Musa acuminata Colla; Musa balbisiana Colla; Musa x paradisiaca L.
Family of Musaceae.

Description & storage
Long thick-skinned edible fruit that is yellow when ripe.
Keep bananas on a fruit dish in the living room at room temperature. If you want the bananas to ripen faster place the bowl in the sun. Like other tropical fruits and tomatoes and bell peppers, never store bananas in the refrigerator. Below 8 degrees Celsius the fruit will decay from the inside. These fruits will not ripen but will turn black in the refrigerator.

Plant
Banana-plants can grow up to 15 m. but most plants vary from 3 to 9 m.
It has very big leafs that can grow to 4 x 1 m.

Short history
Wild forms of the banana plant come originally from the Indo-Malaysian area and are now cultivated all over the tropical and sub-tropical continents.

Use
Bananas are delicious eaten with one's fingers after peeling off the skin. Depending on the type of banana unripe bananas are also cooked, fried or deep-fried a lot. Bananas are the basic food in many tropical countries.

Types
At this moment there are five different types of bananas common on the market:

-Red bananas: have a green/red peel and pink fruit flesh. They taste the same like yellow bananas. The redder a fruit, the more carotene it contains, so maybe they are healthier than their yellow colleagues;

-Fruit-bananas: are the normal, yellow bananas, 15-30 cm.

-Apple-bananas: are smaller, 8-10 cm., and ripen faster. They are also yellow;

-The baby-banana (pisang susa): is yellow as well and measures 6-8 cm. It is the sweetest of the banana family;

-Baking bananas: are 30 to 40 cm. large and are green, yellow or red-like. They cannot be eaten raw. They fulfill the role of the potato in the tropical countries.

Peculiar characteristics

-Is the most well known and eaten (tropical) fruit;

-In Eastern Africa you can buy banana beer. This beer is brewed from bananas;

-Tropical fruit is usually picked unripe and has to ripen in the land of arrival. To make this process go faster bananas are treated with ethylene-gas. Normal bananas also ripen through ethylene -gas but exposing it to additional gas accelerates the process;

-Is the (only) fruit that for some people can work fatting because they contain a lot of starch (more starch than sugar). Those people shouldn't eat too many bananas a day;

-Eat at least one banana a day, they are said to contain everything a human needs and they contain all the 8 amino-acids our body cannot produce itself. For more see the energy in fruit.

-Bananas are a good source of fiber, potassium and vitamin C;

-Red bananas are often dried and converted to meal which is used in many ways;

-Red bananas contain more vitamin C as yellow bananas (the redder a fruit, the more nutritious elements it contains);

-Nutrition Facts

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Pears

 

Pyrus communis
Family: Rosaceae

Description & storage
Pear: sweet juicy yellow or green fruit with a rounded shape that becomes narrower towards the stalk.

Pears are picked when they are almost ripe. The fruit has to come off if you lift the fruit vertically.
The late races can be kept for months at a dark place.
Pears ripen best at room temperature. If you want too keep them a few days you have to keep them in a dark and cold place.

Tree
A pear tree can grow upto 20 m. high. Therefore most pears are grafted on a quince stem so they stay smaller.

Short histotory
Pears are original from Europe and Asia. The first cultivated races were selected from the wild varieties in the prehistoric ages. The Romans knew in the beginning 6 cultivated sorts and later mention 56 races. A late medieval Italian list mentions 232 varieties.
Around 1640 in England only 60 varieties were known. In 1842 more than 700.
In 1860 the American author T.W. Fields mentions 850 races.
This fast increase of pear cultivars during the late 18th century can be ascribed to a few French and Belgian cultivators.

Types and family

Quince:
A quince is a pear like fruit that only can be eaten cooked. The dictionary describes it as the following - a nice smelling fruit that grows on trees that grow upto 6 m. high.
Quinces are a very old fruittype that are originally from Persia. Quinces are not consumed raw but are used for Marmelo which is stil very popular in Spain and Portugal. This marmelo has been the example for the marmelade we make out of citrusfruit today.

Use
Normal pears are mostly eaten raw and taste great in desserts, the small cooking pears are always cooked and eaten as a vegetable or dessert and quinces are mostly processed to a kind of marmelade.

Other peculiar characteristics

-Pears contain much kalium and riboflavine;

-Pears are good for the skin and contain plenty of fibers;

-5-a-day-tips:
- have fresh ripe pears as a side dish with dinner.
- Vanilla ice-cream with pears, chocolate sauce and cream.

-Nutrition Facts

-Selection

-Recipes

-Acidity