Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Akebi - a cooking challenge

Inside the box of goodies was akebi - I have no idea what it is in English. It's a Tohoku food apparently, Yamagata people are thought particularly savage, even from their fellow Tohoku-ites because they eat the bitter skin.  According to kyoto foodie it's considered a fruit - the fleshy inside part is like a rambutan or lychee in taste but has fleshy seeds like a pomegranate (only much softer and fleshier).   Also according to kyoto foodie the wild ones split open naturally whereas the cultivated ones need a bit of help from a knife.  I guess these were wild ones.

Hiro's suggestion was cooking like miso eggplant, which I did.  Very tasty. I cooked two  - peeled one and left the other as is.  I liked the skin on.  Definitely not the food of a savage!
Akebi
Cooked Akebi



5 comments:

Therea said...

That looks it was expelled from the intestine of a large animal. I've never seen one of those before.

Cecilia said...

I don't know why these were brown and not purple. Brown over the purple - perhaps it comes with age... It was quite palatable - much better than reading about them would have one believe.

Jo said...

I ate the fruit today, it was lovely. I'm about to cook the outside part:)

Jo said...

I ate the fruit today for the first time. It was good, not like anything I tried before. I'm about to cook the outside part, let's see:)

Cecilia said...

How did the cooking go?
Are you in Japan? It's not that common even in Japan I think.