Maracuya, Granadilla. I’ll Call It Passionfruit.

I have had my share of passionfruit the last several years. I consider it my absolute favorite exotic fruit whose incredibly heady aroma can fill a room with its unmistakable scent of the tropics. My frenzy started out in New Zealand where the fruit has a dark, purplish rind and crunchy seeds not unlike pomegranate. One time, my daughter bought a whole bag of them. It disappeared in no time. The same variety was available in Australia, where it was served as a fruit for breakfast at a resort I was staying at in Torquay. My wife and I ate several each morning. One of the servers noticed and was kind enough to see us off to Melbourne with several more to take with us.

I’ve also had passionfruit in Hawaii, where it’s called liliko’i. The most common form is oblong, has a yellow rind and tart and sweet fleshy seeds. The islands grow other varities, too, which I’ve sampled.

But I hadn’t expected it in Peru, at least not in the quantity that was available there. The first I saw it was at an ecolodge in the Amazon basin where the fruit also was served for breakfast but in a basket with other fruits. It was yellowish to orangish, globular and about the size of a medium apple.

My wife asked a server what it was. Maracuya. Passionfruit. We split it open from its styrofoam-soft rind and beheld a huge bunch of seeds (see top image). The flavor was more mild than New Zealand fruit and doesn’t have its intense aroma, but the seeds were less crunchy and, as I said, there was a humongous amount of them. If you’ve never had raw passionfruit seeds, think of a mass of slimy, slippery polliwog eggs with a taste of the tropics such as you’ve never experienced. You guessed it, we had maracuya for breakfast everyday we were at the ecolodge and whenever it was available at all our subsequent hotels throughout Peru. Talk about obsession.

We also were told that it’s really called granadilla although I’ve never been able to find anything on the internet that distinguished it from maracuya. I’ll just call it passionfruit.

Passionfruit is famously exploited in desserts and drinks. The Kiwis and Aussies have their pavlova, the Hawaiians their plethora of liliko’i desserts (including shave ice), the Peruvians their maracuya sours. I like it just as well straight from the rind, juices dripping from my fingers, seeds crunching between my teeth and perfume overwhelming my olfactories.