PAWPAW

by Ed Halmagyi

Instructions

I came to eat pawpaws quite unwillingly, to be honest. You see, when I was a kid my mother had this idea that pawpaw, sliced finely and sprinkled with sugar and marsala wine, was a great dessert for family dinner.

With hindsight I can appreciate that developing a mature palate was an integral part of my decision to cook for a living. But for a ten year old, well it wasn’t quite cheesecake, if you know what I mean.

Some years later, I poisoned my relationship with this dish after a little overindulgence. Actually it was with the marsala, not the pawpaw. Perhaps the old adage is right: you can never go back to the drink which gives you your first hangover. And what a hangover it was.

But times change, and so do we. While working in the Solomon Islands on a development project I came to understand what the pawpaw is all about. Picked ripe from the tree, the flesh is soft and giving. It smells of mango and banana, with a hint of astringency underneath. It’s sweet, but with a pleasantly sour aftertaste. To be honest, it’s a pretty grown-up flavour.

The problem we sometimes have with pawpaw is that it will be served under-ripe. If the flesh is still firm the fruit will have no sweetness, no perfume. It will, however, still have that sourness. In South East Asia and the Pacific green pawpaw is used as a vegetable in curries and soups, often in place of taro or cassava.

If you have an unripe pawpaw, place it in a plastic bag with some bananas. In a couple of days it will be perfectly ready to eat. The bananas release ethylene which brings on the ripening process.

Having rediscovered the beauty of the pawpaw I looked around for ways to use it. But something kept coming back to me. Marsala and sugar. So it was that ten years ago I first made one of my signature desserts, a pawpaw and marsala parfait. Pretty damn tasty too.

But please don’t tell Mum. I have a funny feeling there may be a big ‘I told you so’ on its way!