KEY POINTS:
I love these little beauties. Grown from the north of the island to the south, somehow the feijoa is intrinsically Kiwi, even though they're a Brazilian native.
The season is under way now and, depending on how warm your part of the country is, buckets of bountiful feijoas can be found dropping on to the grass in backyards until early July.
The juicy sweet seed pulp is enormously good for us. Three feijoas a day will provide half your vitamin C needs which, when combined with the high levels of antioxidants and fibre, will have you skipping about in the autumn sun. They also contain a lot of iodine, which is rarely found in fruit.
So, what to do with them? Cutting them in half and scooping out the flesh with a spoon is one way of dealing to them, but it doesn't make for much of a recipe. They're nothing if not versatile. Smoothies, sorbet, and that rather delicious wine available at the Matakana market are just a few ways to deploy them.
I decided to make jelly. I'd never done so before but used a jelly bag (available from stores such as Living & Giving and Milly's), which is a thick netting with elastic top on a frame, allowing the juice to drop through. What a great result. The jelly was a glorious colour and on top of home - made crumpets is enough reason to get out of bed in the morning.
For a surprising salad, slicing the fruit thinly and cooking in the oven with pineapple, then combining with pan - fried hapuku, chilli, coriander and Thai basil makes for a surprising salad. Finish off with a good old crumble and a dollop of cream to see you right as the temperatures slowly start to drop.
CHEF'S TIP
Give the fruit a sniff and choose those which are aromatic. Feijoas can ripen further at room temperature then be refrigerated for 2-3 days.