I decided to do one last pawpaw recipe before the season is over. After last week’s pawpaw cream pie, I wondered what it would be like to cross it with strawberry pretzel salad.
When I approached the Two Boots Farm stand I felt a little bad. Colorful edible flowers sat alluringly displayed in plastic clamshells. Cartons of shisito peppers were laid out. Behind the pawpaw table, another table of offerings. When I reached out later, Elisa from Two Boots farm told me ” Yes, sometimes I think people oversee our flowers when they are hunting for the pawpaws (two very different customers really). But we do have a lot of social media followers that I suspect found us because of pawpaws but they started asking us for wedding flower quotes or joining our flower share. In September people flock to us for the pawpaws but if I look at the sales numbers cut flowers are still our best selling item this time of the year.”
I ended up working with pectin to make a vegetarian recipe that could easily be made vegan. It could also be made with milk gelatin (minus cinnamon) for those who don’t want to deal with the pectin.
After going a few years without pawpaws, I just couldn’t take it anymore. This year, the fruit seemed to be more popular than ever, showing up in more recipes, photos, and food discussions. Despite the abundance of this fruit, some foragers debated sharing their locations while others begged for a hot tip.
I’ve never had a hard time finding pawpaws, to be honest, but this frenzy intimidated me. Besides, I think that farmed cultivars just taste better.
So I took an early morning bus ride to the Baltimore Farmers’ Market, where Two Boots Farm sells some of the only farmed pawpaws around.
Although my “home market” is the one in Waverly, as soon as the weather starts changing, I find myself tempted by the downtown market under the JFX, where the echoes of voices and music blend with the overhead cars on the highway. When leafy salad greens give way to collards and cabbage, and corn to sweet potatoes and pumpkins, the Baltimore Farmers Market feels special. The summer crowds start to wane and its a little easier to navigate the loop.
The smells of smoked meats and cinnamon doughnuts greet you as you browse.
After acquiring my pawpaws, I waited in line for coffee. Already, the familiar scent of the pawpaw was wafting out of my bag, threatening to over-ripen as only tropical fruits can do.
I think that a coconut layer cake with pawpaw filling would be pretty good, but that’s for another year. I made my trusty old pawpaw cream pie. Leaving nothing to chance, I stirred the custard with cornstarch, egg yolks and gelatin. Pawpaw seeds slid from my fingers as I tried my best to scrape the pulpy flesh into my pie crust. Although I didn’t have much fruit, the smell permeated my kitchen, and I knew that it would be more than enough to infuse my pie filling with it’s unique flavor.
Now that I’ve become reacquainted with my old friend the pawpaw, I find myself wanting more. Another crisp Sunday morning downtown may be in order. Failing that, I might just recommit. I don’t think I should let another year go by without tasting the magical flesh of our largest native fruit.
I made this pie twice this year. Once with very ripe fruit and once with the ripe
but firm and white flesh seen above. I strongly recommend the latter.
If you are lucky enough to find some farmed paw-paws then this pie will be a crowd-pleaser. Otherwise there is an admittedly disappointing (bitter) aspect to this recipe. This pie is delicious but you may pay the price when you get that bite with the lingering bitterness. (Note: some people aren’t as sensitive to this bitter taste. For me it is quite strong!)
At the 2015 Ohio Paw Paw festival I inquired to the growers association
representative as to why the paw paw pie I’d first made a few years ago had
these bitter spots. I had a few theories – the pulp close to the skin, the
heat from the custard, the stage of ripeness. She informed me, as had Andrew Moore in his OLP interview, that this is just the gamble we take with wild fruits.
This recipe is adapted from my favorite banana cream pie formula – the custard is lightly flavored with alcohol such as vanilla extract or bourbon, the fruit is laid under the custard and its strong flavor permeates the custard above.
I used Cherry Bounce for flavoring and the result was subtle but tasty.
This recipe marks the end of paw paw season on Old Line Plate. I will be tossing the seeds into the woods at Wyman Park so that one year some day maybe I won’t have to leave the city when I want to make this pie.
Recipe:
Vanilla Wafer Crust
1.75 cups crushed vanilla wafers
scant ½ cup of sugar
½ cup melted butter
Combine all ingredients and press into bottom and sides of a large pie dish. Bake at 375° for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Pie filling:
pulp from 1 or two large just ripe paw paw fruits
1/3 cup cornstarch
2/3 cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
3 cups milk, scalded
3 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tsp flavoring eg vanilla, rum, brandy
2 tb sugar
baked pastry shell
optional: 1 packet gelatin
Combine cornstarch, 2/3 cup of sugar and salt in a double boiler or suitable pot, mix well. If you want to serve this as a stiff chilled pie later, you can add some gelatin at this point.Otherwise, the pie has a pudding-like texture. Gradually add milk over medium heat, stirring or gently whisking constantly, just until thickened.
(When I want to add additional flavoring I put it in while the custard is cooking and add a small remaining amount later)
Beat egg yolks in a bowl, whisk in about ¼ of hot custard mixture and then add back to custard in double boiler. Cook until thickened and bubbly.
Remove from heat, stir in butter and flavoring.
Spread paw paw pulp over pie crust and cover with custard.
Beat egg whites (at room temperature) until soft peaks form, gradually add sugar until meringue is stiffened – spread over custard, sealing to edges of pan. Bake at 350° for 5 minutes or until meringue is lightly browned. Serve pie warm or chilled.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Ohio Pawpaw Festival. I’ve been known to travel far and wide for festivals celebrating foods that are relevant to Maryland.
Some festivals are better than others and I have to say that the Ohio Pawpaw Festival is probably the best of the bunch (pun intended) I’ve attended so far. Paw-paws were EVERYWHERE, from the beer to the food to the artwork. I had some paw-paw pizza, paw-paw curry puff, paw-paw ice cream, a few of those paw-paw beers and I watched a paw-paw tasting and information session.
I also got the chance to shake the hand of this interviewee and finally get a copy of his book in hand. I became aware of this book because of the Michael Twitty introduction and I knew instantly that this would provide some good information to go along with my (forthcoming) paw-paw cream pie recipe.
The most satisfying part in all this is that the book has turned out to be entertaining. One reviewer compares Moore to such writers as Mark Kurlansky and I have to agree that this is a book that I will be recommending to friends. It is an engaging read beyond my own obsessive interest in these things. So without further ado here are a few words with the author:
Tell us about
yourself, writing background, etc.
I am the former development news editor of Pop City, a
weekly e-magazine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and my stories have appeared in
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Daily Yonder, The Biscayne Times, and the
Lakeland Ledger.
What is it about
paw-paws that made you feel that a book was necessary?
To many of us enthusiasts the pawpaw is endlessly
interesting—it’s the only member of the vast Annonacea family not confined to the tropics; it’s the
largest edible fruit native to the United States; and it tastes great, like a
banana-mango mix, with a custard-like texture. And yet despite these
exceptional traits the pawpaw is largely unknown. When I first learned about
the pawpaw I wondered how did this unusual fruit come to be, and why is it that
so few of us know that it even exists?
Then I began to wonder, does it have a future as a commercial crop, on
farms and in backyards? I continued to ask questions, and traveled to meet
pawpaw growers in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland, and once it became
clear I had caught the pawpaw bug I was already well-along the path to writing
this book.
Did you find any
interesting historical facts about the way these fruit might have been used by
people, and what kinds of people ate them and how?
Various Native American groups ate fresh pawpaws and likely
cooked or dried them too. The inner bark of pawpaw trees was also used as fiber
for a number of purposes, including the stringing of fish. Over the centuries,
the new Americans—Europeans and Africans, among others—also ate pawpaws, and
the tradition of late summer pawpaw pickin’ has endured in some locales, but
especially in the southern Appalachian Mountains, including Western Maryland
and West Virginia. There are even places named for the fruit—including Paw Paw,
West Virginia, and Paw Paw Cove, in Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
In 1916, a contest was held by the Journal of Heredity to find the best pawpaws in America. Fruit was
mailed to the journal’s office from 26 states, and included over 230 entries.
And among the top seven fruits was a selection from Maryland.
Beginning around 1990, Neal Peterson conducted his pawpaw
breeding experiments in Maryland, in cooperation with the University of
Maryland.
Today, the largest commercial orchard currently in
production, is located near Westminster, Maryland. The farm mail-orders pawpaws
all across the country.
How did you end up
connecting with Michael Twitty for the introduction?
I met Michael Twitty a number of years ago when he spoke in
Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University. If you’ve had the privilege of
listening to a presentation by Micheal, you already know he’s a talented,
dynamic speaker. And if that wasn’t enough, Michael was familiar with pawpaws
and shared his knowledge of how the fruit contributed to the diets of African
Americans, before and after the Civil War, and the tree’s other uses—including baiting
nocturnal mammals such as opossums and raccoons.
What were some of
your best resources in researching the history portion of the book?
There were so many great resources, but I’ll choose two to
highlight: Daniel F. Austin’s Florida
Ethnobotany, for early American history; and the library of the Northern
Nut Growers Association, for its wonderful archive of writings by experimental
fruit growers of the past century. Pawpaw has attracted curious characters for
a long time, and I’m thankful these horticulturalists took the time to record
their thoughts and observations, and that the NNGA has remained a repository
for that information.
Have you tried the
different types of paw-paws? Do you have a preference and/or can you describe
the differences?
All pawpaws, regardless of cultivars (or cultivated
varieties) are of the same species, Asimina
triloba. When plant people find exceptionally good pawpaws—“good” often
being a subjective term, but usually with respect to taste, size, or yield—they
sometimes name the tree and propagate it via grafting. There are a number of
pawpaw cultivars available through various nurseries. In the early 2000s, Neal
Peterson, one of the pawpaw’s longtime champions, released six named varieties
after several decades of analysis and observation. These Peterson Pawpaws are
all named for American rivers with Native American names—Shenandoah,
Susquehanna, Potomac, Allegheny, and so on—as a tribute to the fruit’s earliest
eaters and horticulturalists.
Do you have any
information to share on their nutritional benefits?
Pawpaws are thought to be highly nutritious, offering high
amounts of potassium, vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper, manganese, and
niacin, among other vitamins and minerals. However much nutritional research is
yet to be done.
Do you have a
favorite recipe or way to eat them?
My favorite way to eat a pawpaw is fresh from the tree, and
my favorite prepared dish is without a doubt ice cream.
I collected some
paw paw pulp and froze it one year and I found that parts of it were bitter. My
theory is that the bitterness came from the part close to the peel, any idea?
You can help me improve my pie!
Your theory is correct. There is some bitterness near the
skin, with the skin itself being extremely bitter. The other source might be
the pawpaw itself—some wild fruits are bitter, while others are as sweet and
luscious as any fruit you might find in the grocery store.
