The Other 'B' Word: Breadfruit!

Breadfruit is pretty amazing. Considered a potential answer to famine in the Pacific, one breadfruit tree can provide as much as 400 pounds of food in a year. Packing lots of carbs, this energy-filled fruit is definitely big enough to feed hungry mouths... plus, the tree also produces latex, which worked out really well for the seafaring Pacific Islanders who needed sticky substances to seal their canoes.

The crazy thing about breadfruit is that it bears no seeds. Nope, once breadfruit became renowned for the amount of food it could produce, people basically propagated it to produce the highest possible fruit to seed ratio - meaning, they continually nurtured the trees that produced fruits with the fewest seeds until finally there were fruits with no seeds at all. So, you have to harvest the tiny sprouts from the roots of the mature trees, which are very fragile, to propagate the plant. The plant is less popular in Hawaii than in the rest of the Pacific, though breadfruit is sometimes used as a taro substitute in making poi.

Here is a pretty good shot of what the cooked insides look like. You can see it's a weird texture, and each of the little holes is kind of like an ex-seed pod so it splits up really easily after you've cooked it. The texture is a bit like a baked potato, except crumblier.

The coolest thing about breadfruit is how versatile it is. Most people say it tastes like a potato or bread (hence the name) and thus they eat it in savory dishes. You can make it into fries, you can bake it, you can put it in curries or sauces. BUT, you can also make it sweet. Our hosts Libby and James have described eating it like French toast. And, feeling experimental, we processed it with macadamia nuts and added a bit of oil and egg to make it into a great pie crust for pumpkin pie.

Delicious!

Bananas

This delicious starchy treat is synonymous with most tropical locales, and is praised here in Hawaii for both its flavor and nutritional value. Going along with the initial claim, the banana fruits are commonly utilized as the main starch in many tropical diets. Even though we haven't directly experienced it, cooking the banana flower (pictured here in all its purple glory) is not unusual.

Many types of bananas thrive here in Hawaii, cooking varieties and sweet varieties. On the mainland we are mostly familiar with a sweet variety called Cavendish bananas. These have been artificially preserved and ripened due to their inability to last a long voyage to the supermarket shelf; as an initial skeptic of the greatness of bananas, I guarantee: they taste different right off the tree. Also we have been exposed to red bananas and apple bananas, the two types we have had the most exposure to. Both have a sweeter taste than the Cavendish.

I must clarify; the banana does not grow on a tree. When harvesting bananas one actually chops down the entire stalk of the plant. Called a pseudostem, the stalk of a banana plant is actually the leaves of the plant tightly rolled together and grows successively as an older stalk is harvested.

The banana is an amazing and diverse plant. For example, you vegans out there can substitute bananas for eggs while baking. The two have the same coagulating properties. Crazy... Yes, but it can be done.