Behold the pawpaw, the tropical ‘alien banana’ that grows right here in Canada
Pawpaws taste like a banana, mango and pineapple all rolled into one
You might be surprised to learn that the tropical pawpaw fruit grows right here in Canada.
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fruit → behold → Canada
And if you can get your hands on one, chef Tawnya Brant says you’re in for a treat.
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you → get → treat
“What do you think tropical tastes like?
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tropical → think → ?
If that was a flavour, if that was the smell on its own, that's probably exactly what a pawpaw would be,” said Brant, owner of Yawékon Foods and host of the APTN’s One Dish One Spoon.
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Brant → say → Dish
Brant, a Mohawk chef from Six Nations of the Grand River, says the fruit tastes like a banana, mango and pineapple all rolled into one, with a custardy texture that gets almost caramel-like as it ripens.
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it → say → texture
“It's like a little alien banana … a little shorter and chubbier, I guess, more like an oval type of shape — and they have these huge seeds inside,” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway.
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she → guess → Galloway
Pawpaws have grown in North America for millennia, and were once abundant from Florida to Missouri to southern Ontario.
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Pawpaws → grow → Ontario
They were widely cultivated by Indigenous people before colonization, but were pushed back as forests were cleared for farmland.
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forests → cultivate → farmland
Some trees still grow in the wild and in some orchards in pockets of southern Ontario, B.C. and Quebec, yielding fruit in the fall.
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trees → grow → fall
Part of the reason pawpaws aren’t widely known is that they have a very short shelf life, browning quickly after they’re picked.
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they → know → life
They also bruise very easily, making it difficult to harvest and sell in large numbers commercially.
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it → bruise → numbers
Brant first tried the fruit about a decade ago when a friend brought some to her late mother’s garden.
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friend → try → garden
Before that, she’d heard of the fruit, and that the Haudenosaunee had helped to bring the trees up the eastern seaboard over the centuries, “just because we liked them so much.”
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we → hear → them
“I was told kids would go on like little rafts and go down creeks and … collect them that way,” she said.
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she → tell → them
“It was definitely a once-in-a-year [treat], something to enjoy, and really something to appreciate because we didn't really have a way of preserving them.”
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we → enjoy → them
Thomas Mathias started cultivating pawpaws on his farm about 15 years ago.
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Mathias → start → farm
He says he planted the first trees “just as a lark” to see what would happen, but it took a lot of “tinkering and research” to yield a crop.
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it → say → crop
“[It took] 11 years of experimenting before we got fruit,” said Mathias, who runs Mathias Farm in Ontario's Niagara region.
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who → take → region
“One of the tricks to getting fruit to pollinate was to either put raw meat underneath the tree, or spread raw manure.
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fruit → get → manure
I went with raw manure,” he said.
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he → go → manure
That manure is an untreated mix of horse and llama, sourced from a friend’s farm, which attracts blue bottle flies to pollinate the flowers.
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which → source → flowers
Mathias runs the farm with his sister, Beth Secord.
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Mathias → run → sister
She described the trees as handsome and tropical looking, with huge leaves and flowers that look like “an upside-down burgundy tulip.”
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that → describe → tulip
She remembers the first time she tried the fruit: “I thought, ‘Wow, this is fantastic.
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this → remember → fruit
What's not to like?’”
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What → like → ?
Secord says the 11 trees yield about 250 to 300 pounds of fruit a year (roughly 115 kilograms to 135 kilograms).
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trees → say → kilograms
They sell the fruit at $20 per pound, though smaller quantities are available.
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quantities → sell → pound
Now that they’re a few years into selling the fruit, they’ve noticed an uptick in interest.
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they → ’re → interest
Secord says some people take a small sample and then come back for more.
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people → say → more
Word of mouth has also played a role.
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Word → play → role
“That one person is happy and they're telling 20 friends — and then the phone's ringing,” she said.
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she → tell → friends
“One guy said I've been looking for pawpaws for five years and I finally found you.
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I → say → you
Secord says she’s thrilled more people are getting to try the fruit.
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people → say → fruit
She hopes one day it could make a comeback to the point of people having a pawpaw tree in their own backyard.
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people → hop → backyard
Brant says the best bet to finding pawpaws is probably a farmers’ market, though there are also pawpaw festivals in some parts of Canada, usually in early October.
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bet → say → October
If you can get your hands on some, she says they can be used in salad dressings, sauces and coulis, even a pawpaw cheesecake.
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they → get → dressings
But she warned that the fruit has quite a rich flavour and should be used in smaller quantities.
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fruit → warn → quantities
They’re also great just eaten fresh, but people should remember not to eat the skin or seeds, which are toxic.
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which → ’re → skin
Brant currently has about 16 pawpaw trees growing, but they’re still too small to bear fruit.
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they → have → fruit
She hopes that when they’re bigger, it’ll allow her to introduce more people to this “alien fruit.”
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her → hop → fruit
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
