Feijoa

Pineapple Guava and Guavasteen are commonly used names for the fruit that I prefer calling Feijoa - it's other name. According to Wikipedia The German botanist Otto Karl Berg named Feijoa after João da Silva Feijó, a Portuguese botanist born in the colony of Brazil. What ever the story is - the fruit is delicious and loaded with vitamin C and Folate.

It grows well in warm climates, so California is perfect for it. My husband was well familiar with it when he was growing up in Soviet Russia. Imagine his surprise when he found the fruit unclaimed and in abundance near his apartment complex. You see, in California Feijoa is often used as a decorative evergreen shrub. It's trimmed and shaped as other hedges but not given same consideration as a peach or almond tree might.

Why not hedges?... it's evergreen and flowers lovely

When we bought our house it was still being built, so the back yard was naked and empty. In fact, you could not step outside in the backyard during California winter, since it rains here only during the winter, the mud could claim your shoes. We planned and developed our yard by ourselves and the two feijoa bushes were the first plants to call our backyard their new and final residence.
Over the years the two bushes have grown quite a bit and now we realised we should have planted them further apart.

Our feijoa flowers in the spring and produces abundant fruits around Thanksgiving.
There is so much, my family can't eat it all and most of it is given away.

When feijoa is firm it is tart but as it softens it becomes sweet. The green fruit is edible whole, although some people do not like the outer part since it is really sour even in the ripe fruit. Do not tell it to my girlfriend who eats them barely washing. Some, me including, prefer cutting it length wise in half then scooping the sweet part out with the tea spoon.

After lots of the fruit has been given away I have made some preserves. One of the methods is actually my mother-in-law's since that is how she preserved the November harvest for consumption during several winter months. There it was something of a medicine, an "airborne" if you will.

Recipe #1

This method is plain and simple: equal parts of sugar (or slightly more) to fruit in a food processor, pulsed to a desired coarseness. The fruits are washes and the ends cut. In the refrigerator it can stay for months and much longer in the freezer. It is a delicious desert by itself, with whip cream or spooned over vanilla ice cream. Or friends are crazy over it and actually eat it frozen like a sorbet. I do want to notice that it does have a peculiar texture. The words that come to mind to best describe it is chalky, granny or sandy. If you know how dried figs taste and feel in your mouth, you'll find the texture familiar. By no means it takes away from  its taste.

However, it may be noticeable if used it other ways as I will describe in a minute.

Recipe #2

The second way preserving it is just a step away from the first. Simply cook the first recipe for about 5 min on slow fire after bringing it to a boil. 

Recipe #3

 The third method is cooking it in several steps. After washing and cutting of the ends cut fruit in halves, quarters or slice them as cucumbers in circles. Here I was lazy and left the green skin on. You could also take time and scoop out the soft part from halves and leave the skin behind. I think, however that the skin has all of the aroma of feijoa. Feijoa has a fantastic aroma.  In this method the fruit to sugar is in either equal or slightly less parts. 1,2-1,5 parts sugar to each part fruit by weight. After cooking for about 15 min allow to cool overnight then repeat cooking. Then allow to cool again for 8 hrs or overnight. Each time cooking process will make the preserve darker color, until I turns deep brown.
Again, I love it over the vanilla ice cream.

However.... there is only so much
sweet preserve you can eat.

So I try to come up with recipes that will utilize what I have in the pantry.

  

Lately, my favorite thing is frozen puff pastry. I love it and always have in my freezer. It only takes 20-30 min to defrost and then in another 20 you have yummy desert.  Here is what I do. After defrosting I use rolling pin and roll it in the shape of my silicon pad( rolling it right on it but slightly flour dusted) then I poke holes in the dough with a fork and with it create ledge in the dough by poking holes in a line all around approximately half an inch away from the edge. In the middle of the polka-dotted rolled out dough I put my preserve from recipe #3.

This makes a great and easy desert for guests that were not expected but always welcomed. 

I absolutely love puff pastry.

Here are some other things that I've done in the past.

I had some ripe pears. These could be sliced and slightly cooked with sugar in a non stick frying pan, The same can be done with apples.  Then cooked fruit placed in the middle of rolled out dough and baked.

Home made apricot preserve was used here, too.

Then I decided to try something new and came up with idea for bread out of recipe #1.

4 eggs
1 c sugar
1 c  of the preserve recipe #1
1,5 t sp baking soda
1/2 t sp baking powder
1 t sp cinnamon
1/2 t sp nutmeg
1/4 t sp ground cloves
1/3 c oil
2,5 c flour(approximately may be slightly more)
1c raisins (optional, except in my house my husband will whine if there are not there)
Whip the eggs and sugar together then add the rest of the ingredients. Pour into the oiled pan and bake at 350F till the toothpick comes out clean. The length of baking will depend on the volume of pan you choose. The bread pan that will split the batter in two will take 20-30 min and the large one like me will  take up to 50 min or more.

I do have to warn that the texture or the preserve does come through and is noticeable. Still it was delish.

This year's harvest is done and processed and we are waiting til next year....