Today I went to Publix in search of chocolate soy milk and along the way I made a detour through the fruits and vegetables section. What did I find amongst the familiar fruit landscape? Exactly, a dragon fruit. Roar.
Naturally, you don't come across a dragon fruit and leave it laying there, especially when your 3 year old son is convinced that it somehow came out of a dragon (not that a dragon will come out of it, which would be particularly cool). So I called my mother and asked her the question that all mother's pray their son never asks them, "How does one select a dragon fruit"? She had no clue. Luckily, Google did. So after some brief instruction on picking one with consistent coloring, no splotches, firm yet slightly giving when pressed, and green, not brown, fluffy things on it, I selected my dragon poop and took it home. I put it on the cutting board.
I wasn't happy with its placement so I moved it slightly to the right.
Nothing happened, so I added a knife to the mix.
I heard, via Google's wisdom, that there are 3 types of these. One is yellow on the outside and 2 are pink. Between those 2 pink ones, one is white on the inside and one is pink on the inside. I had no clue what mine was, but I didn't intend to wait any longer to find out.
It was white, which I find more interesting because it's much less expected. The fruit is made up of the white part which has hundreds of tiny black seeds speckled throughout it. Thanks to Google once again, I got the recommendation to use a spoon to separate the inside from the skin.
Slide the spoon around the point where the inside meets the skin and the fruit comes out effortlessly.
I chopped it up into cubes.
The taste is reminiscent of a kiwi, even having that familiar crunch from the tiny seeds. Even the texture is extremely similar to that of a kiwi. However, it's not quite as acidic as a kiwi would be. It has a nice but mild sweetness to it and is quite refreshing. It tastes almost like a kiwi if it were a melon. Or maybe that makes absolutely no sense. All in all I'd say its strikingly similar to what you might think a dragon fruit tastes like if you happened to perfectly guess what one would taste like having never tasted one.
SO, everyone run to Publix and grab a dragon fruit while they're still available. Or just have a bite of mine.
