Delicious Monster

So my problem with shopping at the Park Slope Food Co-op is that they have great deals on onions and tomatoes and apples, but of course I  just end up splurging on the random crazy things that I’ve never seen before. Case in point: Monstera Deliciosa…this Hispanic fruit looks something like a pineapple reshaped into an ear of corn. It cost 4 and a half dollars for one and I had no idea how to eat it. Clearly I had to buy it.

Thankfully, the fruit came wrapped in a handy little pamphlet. Here’s what it says:

Monstera Deliciosa “Delicious Monster”

A succulent tropical fruit which grows on a very large-leafed philodendron in hot and humid areas.  The fruit is long and green, and has small scale-like sections for the outer skin. It is a native of Mexico and Guatemala…The mature fruit has a soft sweet taste similar to a mixture of pineapple and banana….The fruit must only be eaten mature when the outer green sections fall of their own accord to reveal a white interior flesh on a hard core.

So I left in in my fridge for a few days and took it out to find the outer green sections entirely ready to shed. As soon as I picked it up, the little green pieces started falling off one by one, and what was left was this:

The pieces of fruit also tear off pretty easily, and despite some unappealing residuals of green, the light yellow fruit is damn tasty. Actually, it really does taste like a pineapple crossed with a banana – deliciosa!

I just gobbled the whole thing up myself, but in the future I could imagine adding it into a fruit-and-veggie salad like this, or it would be perfect on crepes with nutella (which I believe gansie is still supposed to make?)