Jabuticaba ✦

Jabuticaba

What it is

The fruit grows straight out of the trunk and the main limbs — cauliflory, which the species name cauliflora records — so a tree in season looks upholstered in black beads. It begins to ferment three or four days after picking, which is why it almost never travels: outside Brazil it arrives as juice, vinegar or liqueur.

In the kitchen

Eat the pulp and leave the skin at table, but keep those skins for the pot — they hold the tannin and nearly all the colour, and a short infusion gives a reduction with grip. Do not boil them long, or the tannin turns drying.

Goes with

White sugar Lime Vanilla Dark chocolate Duck Pork Red wine vinegar Black pepper

In season alongside

Lingonberry Cranberry Damson Datterino tomato Grape Grape must

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