Our Sunday dawned bright and beautiful, warm and partly cloudy. A good thing, because having done it inside and out, there was no way I was going to process pawpaws in my kitchen. It is a messy bidness.
So we set up outside on the picanic table. Photos of the pawpaw witches by Phoebe Thompson.
First to go were the squishy ones. There's an optimum ripeness to pawpaws. When you can squeeze a pawpaw right out of its skin, it's ready to go. The pulp pulls away nicely from the shiny seeds and you get the most bang for your buck then. Too green, and the pulp sticks to the seeds and skin and you lose a lot. It tastes best when ripe. Overripe fruit turns black, and the pulp gets orangeish.
Believe me, you can smell when they're ripe. Our friend Nina found her first pawpaw stand in the woods by smelling it!
You squish the pawpaws down into the colander until you have only seeds and skins left.
Anne developed a method of squeezing the pulp and seeds out of the skin before squishing it in the colander. This was a good innovation, because the green skin is a bit bitter, and you don't want it to find its way into the final product. Anne's pulp was Premium. Mine was full of little green bits that had to be picked out, and definitely would have been ranked Standard Grade.
photo by Liam Thompson
Ideally, what pours out the bottom is pure gold.
photo by Liam Thompson
We worked out there in the sun all day. It was like making mud pies with your best friend. It's the kind of thing country women have done for centuries, and don't do enough these days, in my opinion. Too much twiddling away at keyboards. Not enough gooshing.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
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