A little piece of Brazil in winter

Malanga Baby was less than thrilled with the cauliflower we started on this week. (I know, I know, who gets excited about cauliflower? But it’s high in vitamins C and B and has tons of potassium!) I was going to give her one more night of it, but then I walked into Whole Foods today, encountered a beautiful pile of passion fruits, and knew I had to get one for my daughter to try. It was a taste she was hard-wired to enjoy since I drank tons of calorie-rich passion fruit milkshakes when I was pregnant.

There were just two problems. The first was that I had no idea what to do with the fruit itself since I made said milkshakes from frozen passion fruit pulp (conveniently located in the Hispanic section of my local supermarket, along with frozen maduros and the like). The second, and most important, was that I was certain none of my baby cookbooks said a word about passion fruit and all I could find in my usual go-to source was that it is a bit acidic. So I posted my questions to a national baby message board. I got two responses: 1) “My parents are South African. Apparently passion fruit was one of my first solids. Scoop, mash, and feed is what they did.” And 2) “Lots of seeds. You can eat it all. Crack it open and scoop it out.”

Next step, start Googling in Spanish and Portuguese. I found what I was looking for on a Brazilian site, Guia do Bebe. It had a recipe for pear-passion fruit juice for babies. The combination sounded wonderful and Malanga Baby already likes pears, so I altered it a little. Instead of merely straining the pears for juice, I made a pear puree with a hint of passion fruit. It smelled overwhelmingly like passion fruit and Malanga Baby couldn’t get enough of it!

She’s holding the passion fruit in the picture above, and wearing a child-size apron I bought her as an impulse purchase today. Yes, it’s way too big for her right now, but I plan on her spending lots of time with me in the kitchen for years to come.

Passion Fruit-Pear Puree Method
Make pear puree according to the method in Lisa Barnes’ The Petit Appetit Cookbook: cut and core pears and place in a steamer basket above two inches of lightly boiling water. Cover and steam for 10-12 minutes. Let pears cool, then remove skin and place in food processor, adding cooking liquid by tablespoons as necessary.

Cut open the passion fruit and place contents in a sieve to strain the juice into the food processor with the pears. The puree will take on a nice, summery passion-fruit color.

Eat the seeds and bits of pulp remaining in the sieve yourself for a yummy snack!