(gentle piano music)
- Guys, I have a really weird one today.
This is the akebia.
It is a fruit that I've been wanting to try
for a really long time
and something that I've mentioned before in the past.
I've had videos kind of related to this.
I did a video a while back
on something called the dead man's fingers.
That is actually related to this.
It's not in the same genus, it's in the same family.
And it can kinda seem like a little bit
of a resemblance to it.
I also made a video about the akebia
that is not one that you can eat,
one that has been dried out into a fertility statue.
I bought this at a fertility festival in Japan.
And yeah, basically somebody took one of these,
they dehydrated it all the way,
and then they made it into this shape.
This particular video is for all ages.
So, yeah, if you wanna learn more
about my little fertility statue,
there's a link in the description to that one.
I wanna give a very big thank you to Ryan
for sending this to me.
This is not an easy thing to send.
Once these things ripen, they split open,
and this fruit on the inside is like goop.
It's like really, really vulnerable.
To ensure that this got to me,
is he actually like took opened fruit that were ripe,
he sealed them and wrap them with rubber bands,
and then he put them in a box with ice in like a cooler box,
and ship them to me.
So, they're actually perfect.
These are perfectly ready to go.
They survived the trip really, really well.
Thanks to his ingenuity in doing that.
So, yeah.
Again, Ryan, thank you so much for sending this to me.
(gentle piano music continues)
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All right, so I think I could actually start the day now.
What do you think?
You just can take a spoon of it like that.
And as you can see on the inside,
there's also all these little black seeds.
It's just chock full of seeds like that.
It doesn't really have a smell.
Oh!
That's all right.
Right now, I have a mouthful of seeds.
A lot of people,
what they do is they'll spit these out as they're eating it.
In Japan where this is very popular,
people don't eat the seeds.
But the seeds are edible,
so I am going to eat them. (crunching)
The seeds aren't the best thing in the world.
They're a little bit bitter
and they have like a sharpness to them,
not sharp like...
sour really, but chemical kind of sharpness.
Biting into the seed is a mistake.
(chuckles) I think that that is making it more difficult
for me to tell what the flavor of the fruit is like.
So I'm gonna try this again,
but this time I'm not going to eat those.
It is not like the relative, the dead man's fingers,
and that's kind of what I was expecting.
The dead man's fingers tastes a lot like watermelon,
almost exactly like watermelon.
This does not have that flavor.
It does have the texture.
It has a very similar texture to dead man's fingers.
The flavor of this is very familiar.
It tastes like ice cream bean,
which is a fruit that I've reviewed in the past in Bolivia.
And that, if you haven't had that,
it tastes kind of like persimmon.
And if you haven't had a persimmon,
persimmon is just like very sweet, mellow,
maybe a little like syrupy, like honey-ish in a way,
and it has like a touch of maybe like a chestnut
or sweet potato kind of flavor.
The main difference between this and a persimmon
is that this is maybe a little bit milder.
Persimmons and ice cream beans and this
do not taste exactly alike.
This is a little bit closer to an ice cream bean
than it is to a persimmon,
but it's still pretty close to a persimmon,
so if that helps.
It's just a very sweet, mellow flavor, sugary,
there's no tartness to it.
The sweetness on it is pretty high.
I would give it like a seven.
It's sweeter than an apple.
It's not quite sugar, but it's pretty sweet.
This is sometimes called chocolate vine.
Not because the fruit tastes like chocolate,
but the flowers of this
are supposed to have a chocolatey smell.
This is a leaf from the akebia and the leaves are edible.
Usually how these are used is they are dried out
to make a tea.
They believed it's used medicinally or they are sauteed.
You can saute these and eat them like a leafy vegetable.
I'm pretty sure they're probably okay to eat raw,
but it's not normally eaten raw,
so I'm just gonna take a little bite of it.
Didn't taste like anything, a little bit bitter.
The pod of the akebia is edible.
You can eat this.
However, it's not used as a fruit,
it is used as a vegetable.
And where it's mostly used is in Japan.
This is grown in the Yamagata Prefecture.
And I think it's more of like a specialty item,
maybe going more in the direction
of one of those expensive fruits
like the Miyazaki mango that I had,
like a specialty item
that people will spend a lot of money on.
I've seen a few references to how to cook this.
One of the more interesting ways
is that you open it like this,
and then you fill it with something,
you close it, and then you deep fry it,
which I think would be cool
but that would distract from the flavor of the pod.
So I'm gonna kinda just treat this more simply
and just do a basic sauteing of this fruit.
(upbeat invigorating music)
(sighs) Okay, welcome to my sink.
(upbeat invigorating music continues)
The recipe that I'm kind of following
is from the blog Kyoto Foodie.
(upbeat invigorating music continues)
Texture on this is kinda weird.
It's like a little bit rubbery.
It's not exactly like a squash.
It's not exactly like an eggplant.
(upbeat invigorating music continues)
So you know how earlier I said that you can eat the seeds
on it and then I ate like a bunch of the seeds?
Uh, that might've been a mistake
'cause I feel like a little itchiness in my throat now.
So I think I might be having
like some sort of minor reaction to those seeds.
I don't feel poisoned, but it wasn't nice.
It doesn't feel great. (coughs lightly)
It feels like I just like swallowed a piece of steel wool.
Saying that, I'm gonna do something else
that's probably not a great idea.
I'm gonna eat a piece of this raw,
which is, I think, edible.
Like, all I can see online is that this is edible raw,
but it's not commonly done.
Usually when this is eaten, it is cooked.
I'm not gonna cook it.
I'm just gonna try it.
So this is maybe also something
you don't wanna try yourself,
but I've no idea what this is going to taste like.
(Jared munches)
When I was little, we had those little things of paste.
I remember, taking some of that paste and eating some of it.
Reminds me a little of that.
It's got kinda like a refreshing kind of texture to it,
refreshing kinda juiciness to it.
But yeah, the flavor...
bitter chemical flavor and paste, school paste.
Um...
(gentle upbeat music)
So while my mixture there is cooking,
I'm going to try just a piece of this cooked on its own
with no seasoning on it.
See if it tastes any better.
It tastes better,
but honestly it doesn't taste like much.
It's slightly bitter.
It's like slightly bitter bland squash.
The most interesting about it is just the texture of it
is still quite juicy and succulent
even after being fried for a couple of minutes,
it's still retaining that.
Time for everybody's favorite part, plating.
There you go.
Hmm, so it doesn't look like the most appealing thing
in the world, won't lie.
But it smells pretty good.
It smells a lot like dango.
It's like this little rice mochi sort of snack
that they have in Japan.
Love that stuff.
So it smells actually really good to me.
Nice, sweet soy sauce kind of smell.
All right. (munches)
You know what? It's okay.
It's all right.
I don't hate it,
but it's not really my sort of thing.
The sauce in this is really nice.
However, I think if I were to take that sauce
and put it on some vegetables or something,
I'd like it better than this.
The fruit itself in there,
the akebia fruit doesn't really provide much to it.
The flavor that you're getting from it
is just like a little hint of bitterness.
That's it.
There's nothing there.
So the reason why you'd want this is to get that texture.
So if you like the texture of slimy things,
you might like to use it just for that texture.
This might be something that is useful for making fake meat.
To find this texture in nature is not a normal thing.
I mean, look at that.
I mean, where are you gonna get that?
So, I think maybe this is the sort of thing
that if you wanted to have like a sushi sort of substitute
or sashimi sort of substitute,
like the substitute for raw fish or eel
or something like that's going to have a texture
that's like a little bit softer,
but will absorb the flavor that you want it to,
then this might be useful for that.
So I think that's about it.
But, wow!
Akebia is very, very strange.
It is a strange looking fruit with a flavor on the inside.
That fruit flavor is actually pretty good.
And how it's used in Japan is just really fascinating.
If you have the means of trying this or growing this,
definitely check it out.
And again, thank you Ryan for sending this to me.
And yeah, I'll see you next time. Bye-bye!
Before you click out,
I'd like to give a very big shout out to Jonathan Ringstad.
Jonathan is a mega patron over on patrion.com.
I talk about it a lot, but if you haven't checked it out,
check out the link in the description below.
And again, Jonathan, thank you so much.
Bye-bye!