- Hello, welcome to another episode of
"LOL, I don't know what I'm doing,
but we're going to have fun with it."
Where every episode is a metaphor for the life
that we're living in 2020.
So on our last episode, we worked with jackfruit,
which I loved.
I love the fruit.
I love the seed.
I even loved the chewy tendrils that I did not cook enough,
but today we're going to go to the store again.
And we're going to see what else is in stock
for us to play with.
Let's get shopping.
I saw some star fruit. There was dragon fruit,
two different kinds.
I saw some beautiful, big beans,
still in their shell, Haba beans,
maybe they're related to Fava beans?
Then I saw a fuzzy, green, Mexican Chayote.
They looked so fun and I really wanted to try them,
but another thing caught my eye.
I will be attempting to break the monotony
of my life routines with the introduction
of a brand new ingredient
that I've never cooked with before.
Dinosaur eggs.
Just kidding, they're called the mamey.
Mamey sapote.
I don't know if I'm saying that right at all.
A species of tree native to Cuba and Central America
commonly eaten in many Latin American countries.
The fruit, technically a berry,
is about four to 10 inches long,
three to five inches wide.
Flesh ranging in color from pink to orange to red.
The brown skin has a texture
somewhat between sandpaper and fuzz on a peach.
These kind of remind me of mangoes.
If mangoes somehow fossilized
into dinosaur egg looking things.
At $2.99 a pound, three of these babies cost me $16 exactly.
Not budget eats, and I hope they taste good again.
For your daily moment of zen,
I encourage you to go buy a mamey fruit.
It smells like I'm in a forest.
(zen music)
And it just rained, maybe six hours ago.
And the leaves are decaying slowly
around the trunk of the trees.
The soil is a little bit damp and a little bit soggy
if you press too hard with your feet.
Inhale deeply and exhale deeply.
And imagine yourself in a far away landscape
where you can actually hear birds sing,
without car horns every five seconds.
So let's cut one open.
(chill music)
I think we've hit a bit of a speed bump.
I think this isn't as ripe as it should be.
So apparently when it's properly ripe,
the fruit should have a give to it.
Kinda like an avocado that's ripe.
(woody knocking sound)
That's not, that's not the sound of a soft avocado.
Is it?
I don't know what I'm doing, but that's okay.
I do see that underneath the skin,
they have a sweet potato-like bright orange flesh,
which I'm taking as a good sign.
because when they're not ripe,
they're apparently very green inside
and there's no going back now that we've made a cut in it.
So I'm just gonna keep cutting.
(mamey cracks)
Okay.
Well there you have it, folks.
That's what a under ripe mamey fruit looks like inside.
Obviously did a very poor job picking my fruit today,
but it smells really nice inside, actually.
It smells like almonds.
It smells like amaretto.
The flesh is very firm.
It is not creamy at all.
It is not soft at all.
But let's peel a little bit of this.
Let's cut a chunk and let's taste it.
It looks completely like a sweet potato in its raw form.
It even has the kind of fiber strings running through it.
Let's give it a taste, shall we?
It is very chalky and bland.
Very starchy.
Exactly like biting into a raw sweet potato.
If it looks like a sweet potato,
and it tastes like a sweet potato,
why don't we just treat it like a sweet potato?
So I'm going to go ahead, finish trimming this one up.
I'm going to peel it until all the fibrous parts
of the skin are gone.
Then de-seed it, chop it up.
What?
Can someone explain to me why a seed has already sprouted,
but the fruit doesn't taste ripe?
Please?
It does not make sense.
So here is half of our huge mamey chopped up.
Let's give these a little boil, huh?
So for the boiled version of mamey,
we're just going to put them in a pot of water,
little bit of salt, and cook them until they're tender
and give a taste.
And then I'll decide what we can do with them.
For the other half of our mamey,
I'm going to cut it into wedges and we're going to toss it
in a little bit of olive oil and seasoning.
A little bit of salt.
And I found some really old dried out rosemary in my fridge.
This smells like the forest, too.
Maybe they were meant to be together.
So a little rosemary.
'Cause rosemary always makes me feel prettier.
When roasting veggies, always make sure
that you're spacing them out far apart on the sheet tray
so that each individual piece
gets exposed to the heat evenly.
That's how you get nice and toasty edges.
I'm going to slide it into a 375 oven
and let them roast into fries.
Yes, I know it's 90 plus degrees outside
and yes, I know I should not be turning on the oven
right now, but we're going to do this
in the name of science.
So our mamey has been boiling for about 15 minutes.
Let's check to see how they're doing.
Ooh, tender.
We have our boiled mamey still steaming from the pot.
Let's try this.
(chill music)
It smells a little bit like a russet potato,
a sweet potato, toasted almonds.
It looks like a sweet potato on the inside.
Very fibrous, kind of stringy.
The interesting thing about it is its texture.
It's very starchy.
I smushed it between my fingers and it's like glue.
And it tastes very sticky as well.
And I'm thinking,
if I boil this in a mixture of coconut milk and sugar
this could be a very delicious dessert.
So, mamey coconut sticky rice porridge?
That kind of sounds delightful.
So for the sticky rice,
we're going to rinse the rice
until the water is mostly clear.
We're going to let it soak in that water
for at least half an hour, and then we're going to drain it.
We're going to set it over a pot of boiling water
with a strainer up top that hold the rice.
And we're going to lid it,
we're going to let that rice just steam
in that warm, hot, wet environment
until it's nice and sticky and delicious.
In the meantime, we're going to drain out our mamey
that's been boiled.
We'll add some coconut milk to it.
We'll add some sugar to it.
Definitely let that cook until it's nice and creamy
and sugary and rich with coconut creaminess.
And then we put the two together.
20 minutes are up.
We're going to give these a flip.
We're going to test to see how tender they are.
Ooh, they're getting crispy on the other side.
Yes, that is exactly what I want to see.
They're knife tender, but...
I don't think they're quite as creamy on the inside yet.
So maybe 15 minutes more and we'll check that.
And then the meantime,
I'm going to think up of a dipping sauce for these fries.
'Cause they need a little bit of help
in the flavor department.
Ketchup, mayo, red onion, a little squeeze of lemon juice,
salt and pepper, really, whatever else you want in it,
easy peasy special sauce.
This looks pretty good to me.
Basically anything that has mayo in it has my name on it.
I think that's going to go great with these fries.
Here are our golden rosemary mamey fries.
They smell good.
They smell like rosemary and toastiness.
Nicely seasoned.
Freshly cracked black pepper, nicely salted.
Guys, and it's very crispy.
Only a metal utensil will do this crispiness justice
on the microphone.
(clinking noise)
Let's have a taste.
Interesting.
(mamey crunches)
It's smooth with a little bit of fibrousness to it,
but not stringiness.
It's got age, it's got wisdom,
it knows what's going to happen to the future.
That's what it tastes like.
The moment of truth has arrived.
Our mamey rosemary French fry has become a vehicle
for this special sauce,
which I'm not complaining about.
It tastes really good because mayo,
how could you not taste good when you put mayo in it?
Aaron, do you want to come try some unripe
mamey fruit fries?
(banging and sliding noises)
(chill music continues)
- [Aaron] Mm.
- [June] What do you think about the fries on its own?
- [Aaron] These are great.
For me, fries are all about texture.
- [June] And these deliver?
- [Aaron] Mm-hm.
- [June] Wow.
- [Aaron] 'Cause the Rosemary is a really great addition.
These have a better chew than sweet potato fries
and I think a better flavor with your seasonings.
So I'm going to give it an eight without the sauce.
- [June] Wow!
- [Aaron] And a nine with the sauce.
- [June] Holy shmoles!
- [Aaron] Mm-hm.
- I like them. They're growing on me.
I'm like kind of addicted now,
to this texture.
And to the mayo, obviously.
These have been stewing away for about half an hour
and the coconut milk and sugar has reduced down
to a nice thick syrup.
It's absorbed a lot of the nice coconuty flavors
and it's lightly sweetened and thoroughly creamy now.
Yup.
Still a pure block of starch inside.
I gotta say what I'm most surprised by in terms of cooking
with a mamey, is that it doesn't really break down.
The shape is perfect retention.
It's exactly the shapes that I cut them into
and they have not fallen apart at all
despite being boiled for 20 minutes
and then stewed for another 30 plus.
So solid.
It's like what I want my best friend to be.
Dependable...
through and through.
Because mamey is pretty bland,
I'm going to go ahead and season
with some pumpkin pie spice and some vanilla extract.
I think because it's so similar to sweet potato
in look and texture that it would do really well
with these wintry, autumny spices.
So just give that a stir and we'll serve it up
along with our rice.
The smell of rice has got to be in one of my top favorite
smells on earth.
(jazzy music)
And we gotta drizzle it with some sweetened condensed milk
because why not?
Mama mia.
And then we put some pumpkin pie spice
and then we doused it in a little bit of milk
just to soften everything up and make it soupier.
Dessert is always my favorite.
A little bit of everything.
Mm-hm.
Mm.
Aaron, you have to try this.
- [Aaron] Is it sticky rice?
- It's sticky rice.
- [Aaron] Oh, I don't know if I could run faster over there
than I did last time.
Oh my God.
This looks so good.
Oh man.
Well, I shouldn't have rated that last dish so high
because now I have to rate this one an 11.
- [June] Wow!
Is it because you love sweet sticky rice things?
- [Aaron] It probably is.
But this version of it is excellent, June.
That is a great flavor combination of the mamey.
More.
- [June] Go enjoy.
- [Aaron] Mm-hm.
- I have to cook one more thing.
So this is definitely super delicious.
It's super starchy, but super creamy.
It's a little bit sweet now.
It really brings out that natural earthiness
that's in the mamey,
but combines it with that rich fattiness
of coconut and sugar.
It's kind of like a rice pudding,
deconstructed and extra fibrous.
So Aaron really liked it.
And I have to say, that's not bad, not bad.
How about we cook one more thing?
So when I boiled that mamey fruit,
I took about a third of it and set it aside.
And I'm thinking we should use this
to make a sweet and sour pork using this as pork.
I'm thinking because it holds its shape so well
and it doesn't really disintegrate,
it could be a really nice meat substitute.
It's very starchy, very filling and very meaty, almost,
in how solid it is.
So for the sweet and sour pork,
"pork," we're going to take our cubed, boiled mamey
and we're going to take some cubed onions and apples
that have been peeled and chopped
plus a little bit of salt,
and some corn starch.
And then we're just tossing until it's all easily coated.
Heat up our pan.
Drop in a little bit of oil.
And let it go.
And in the meantime, we'll whip up our sauce.
Gonna grate some ginger, garlic,
add a little bit of ketchup, a little pour
of rice wine vinegar, a little bit of soy sauce
and a little touch of sugar to taste.
A little bit of black pepper and salt.
Now give it a stiry-stir.
Mm, ketchup soup.
Delicious.
Once things are looking nicely golden and toasty,
we're gonna hit it with the sauce.
Pour it into the pan and let it cook
until it's nice and syrupy.
It looks great. I'm proud of myself.
Smells pretty good.
Could have fooled me.
Looks like it could be pork.
You'd never know.
It's time to taste it.
I'm going to get a bite with all three.
Mamey, red onions, and apple.
The apple is still crunchy.
Mm, I like that.
Aaron, will you come taste?
You should get a bite with apple and mamey
and red onions for the full flavor combo.
- [Aaron] No meat?
- [June] No meat.
- [Aaron] All right.
You could serve that as dessert.
- It's a dessert?
- [Aaron] It's a dessert.
I, I was gonna--
- That's not what I intended.
- [Aaron] As a hot dessert.
I rate it a nine.
- [June] Wow.
- [Aaron] Yes.
- [June] And as a stir fry that's not dessert?
(both laugh)
- [Aaron] It's too sweet.
- I'm going to give this one a nine too.
It's really good.
I love the texture of it.
What's your favorite today?
Out of the three?
- [Aaron] Sticky rice, for sure.
- Well, that was an adventure.
I started the day by looking at mamey and deciding,
let's take it easy on myself today.
Let's buy this, crack it open,
put it in a smoothie, make a milkshake out of it.
Maybe top it with some yogurt and mangoes
and call it a day.
Instead I bought unripe mamey
and proceeded to salvage what I could.
We ended up with three fantastic dishes.
All the recipes that we made today
can be made with potatoes, sweet potatoes,
taro, plantains, even.
Ooh.
I've never cooked with plantains before.
Maybe a third episode?
Stay hydrated, take care of yourselves,
feed yourself good things.
And I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)