KumQuat Fruit

Image: Mavromatis Distillery

The island of Corfu is the only place in Greece where the Kumquat fruit is cultivated. The word Kumquat in Chinese means "golden orange" and the fruit resembles very small oranges. It can be eaten with the skin and the flavour is bittersweet. Kumquats were first brought to Corfu by the British botanist Sidney Merlin in 1860.

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Nowadays, kumquats are mostly grown in northwest Corfu, especially near the village of Nymfes. The Mavromatis Distillery, where kumquat products are produced, also has an exhibition area where visitors can see how the liqueur and sweet are made. 

 Images: Mavromatis Distillery

Kumquat can be made into liqueur, marmalade and sweets. It can also be sliced and added to salads, as well as being a garnish for cocktail beverages. 

Greek Prickly Pears

Although it is not exclusive to Greece, the Prickly Pear Tree grows prolifically in many areas here. It is a delicious fruit and we are now busy eating the prickly pears here!

Prickly pears here are called either Frangosyka (Frankish Figs) or Pavlosyka (Paul's Figs). The latter name is used only in Corfu as far as I know and, though it is not certain, I have been told that the name comes from Pavliana, a part of the island where they were originally prolific. If anyone has any more information on this, then I would be glad to here from you.

Although we say 'tree', it is really a cactus plant and grows easily and prolifically in many areas in southern Europe. In Corfu you can find the plants all over the island. The name 'prickly pear' comes from the fact that the fruit has large, sharp thorns which make it difficult to handle. The photo above is of a large, sprawling cactus on our neighbour Soula's land.

An interesting and perhaps little known fact is that researchers from the University of South Florida have found that mucilage from the prickly pear cactus is a natural water purifier. Their researches revealed that the thick gum produced by the cactus could capably filter 98 percent of the bacteria Bacillus cereus from the polluted water. You can read more about this here in a post from my other blog.

You can see in the photo below how the fruit is picked. The tin-shaped part at the top of the long handle is hollow so that you can enclose the fruit in it and then twist and pull it off and put it straight into the bucket or basket. This means that you avoid having to handle the thorns. You'll notice it has two sizes to accommodate for different sized fruit! This is the cutting edge of village technology!

This is Soula showing the fruit that she's just picked.

These are some of the Frangosyka that we picked.

Again, when you are peeling the fruit, you have to be careful of the thorns. As well as the large, obvious thorns, there are tiny little hair-like thorns that take an age to get out of your fingers - ask me!

You can see one way of peeling in the photo below, using a fork to hold the fruit and a knife to peel it. The final photo shows the fruit as it is once the skin has been removed. I can tell you it's definitely worth the effort! The juicy fruit is definitely one of my favourites and especially if you keep it in the fridge before eating.

First, cut off the end.

Slice the skin lengthwise.

Peel off the skin to reveal the inner fruit.

The fruit ready to eat. You can see the seeds here as well. Delicious!

Collecting Olives

I wrote about this in my other blog Corfu Chronicles, but thought it would be appropriate and of interest to readers here.

We went collecting olives this week. We have a few trees that have what are called Kalamon olives, which are the ones you eat rather than make into oil. You may be familiar with Greek Kalamata olives - Kalamata is a town and area in the Peloponnese, Greece - well, the Kalamon olives are that type.You collect these so-called "table" olives directly from the trees, rather than spread nets underneath, which is what you do with the olives that you use to make oil. We will be collecting those olives in January.


Here, you can see a bowl with some of the olives after they were picked. You don't eat them straight off the tree - they are far too bitter for that - but there is a simple process you put them through before they reach your table.

First of all, you discard the ones that are damaged or have been eaten by insects. Then you score them on two opposite sides with a razor blade (not a knife) or on three sides if they are large.

Having done that, you put them in a jar filled with water and change the water every day for 20 days.


We separated the larger olives (with 3 scores) from the others, and you can see them in water here. Once three weeks have passed, I'll post again explaining and showing how the olives are finally prepared to go on the table and get eaten!

Watermelon Delight

Watermelon delight, or watermelon pie, is traditionally made in the Cyclades Islands as well as in some of the Dodecanese Islands.

The traditional recipe uses an August watermelon from a waterless plantation - a field where different fruit and vegetables, such as melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, gumbo etc. are cultivated, without a drop of water. These fruits are usually smaller in size and extremely aromatic.

However, in the absence of that kind of watermelon, it can still taste delicious with normal watermelons.

Ingredients

For a 30-cm baking pan:

1 medium size watermelon
1/2 kg flour
3 - 4 tablespoons sugar
50g sesame seeds
3 tablespoons honey (preferrably Greek)

Preparation

Cut the watermelon in half.

Discard the hard outer skin and place the inside in a bowl.

Remove the seeds and make into a pulp with your hands.

Allow the watermelon to strain for about an hour. (you can keep the juice to drink)

Mix the flour, sugar about 1/3 of the honey with the pulp and place in the baking pan.

Pour another 1/3 of the honey evenly over the mixture and sprinkle with the sesame seeds.

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C for about 70 minutes.

When you remove it from the oven, add the remaining honey and the dessert is ready.

It can be eaten straight from the oven, but is also delicious cold.

Eat and Enjoy