Dragon Fruit on Fan-Rib Skewers

With its blazing pink skin and strange lime-green scales, a dragon fruit looks rather like a prehistoric pod, or the egg of an alien from a far-flung galaxy.  I was intrigued to find dragon fruit, which I have never seen, let alone tasted, at my local Fruit and Veg city last week, so I bought two to take home and show my family.

I've used the bamboo 'ribs' from an inexpensive Chinese fan
 as skewers for the dragon fruit triangles.

The fruit caused a minor sensation, and my kids were particularly intrigued by the cool white flesh of the fruit, which is peppered with black seeds and encircled by an inner band of glowing - almost fluorescent -  fuschia pink.

This tropical beauty, Google tells me, is the fruit of a climbing cactus native to South America (Hylocereus species), and is also known as a pitaya and a strawberry pear.  There are several varieties, including one with vivid pink flesh, and they are cultivated chiefly in Central and South America, and also in parts of Asia such as Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. It has beautiful white flowers that bloom at night and are pollinated by bats and moths.

It's just as well that this is such a flamboyant-looking fruit, because it doesn't really have a blow-your-skirt up flavour. It tastes a little like watery green melon and kiwi fruit, and to my palate has an ever-so-slightly saline aftertaste. Various dragon fruit sites on the Net tell me it's refreshing (and pretty!) in a fruit salad, or served on its own, in chunks, between courses. It's also used in smoothies and sorbets, and as a medicinal drink. It should be served very cold, and is apparently delicious eaten straight from the freezer.

I wouldn't do anything else with dragon fruit but serve it as a novelty (it's perfect for a children's party). The delicate wooden skewers in the photograph above are the ribs from a paper fan I bought at my local Chinese market. I know it may seem wasteful to tear up a fan just for its ribs, but I buy these fans by the dozen, for around R5 each.

Chill the fruit very well before you cut it up, slice it into discs about a centimetre thick, and then cut each disc into six or eight.  Push the skewers through the skin (you may need to make a little cut if the skin is tough) and serve with a spritz of lemon juice.

Please note that the skin of the dragon fruit is not normally eaten (although it's not poisonous) and that I've left it on in the photographs because it's just so pretty. Having said that, I ate the skin, and suffered no ill effects.

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