CARICA PAPAYA
PAPAYAS beg to be drizzled with lime juice, so answer their prayers.
The Organic Factor
In the early 1990s, the Hawaiian papaya industry was near collapse because ring-spot virus was attacking the plants. Genetic engineers inserted a foreign gene into two varieties of papaya—Rainbow and SunUp—that conferred resistance to the virus. Organic growers there have since been complaining that pollen from genetically modified (GM) papayas may contaminate their non-GM varieties—mostly Solo, Sunrise, and Washington. To keep the GM pollen from pollinating their papaya flowers, organic growers will have to bag their flowers and get organic seed from elsewhere. The fruit that develops will be GM fruit if the tree is from GM-pollinated seed.
From the consumer’s point of view, buying organic papayas insures that you are not ingesting genetically altered food. A problem would arise only if organic growers allowed their trees to be pollinated by nearby GM trees and then planted the seeds and sold the presumable GM fruits as organic.
NUTRITION
Papayas are a nutritious, nonfat, low-calorie, cholesterol-free source of folic acid—so important for pregnant women—and vitamins A and C (even more than apples and oranges).
TYPES
Almost all of the papayas grown in the United States are from Hawaii and are of the small but high-quality Solo type of fruit with sweet golden orange flesh. Our stores also carry jumbo Mexican papayas that are not as sweet and whose flesh is yellow-orange.
SEASONALITY
Papayas are available year-round, but their peak season runs from April through October.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Many of the papayas you find at the store will be green or yellowish green, which means they’re not ripe. But unripe papayas are useful, such as in the well-known Thai Green Papaya Salad.
When papayas ripen, they turn a bright yellow all over and soften to the touch. Grab them if you see them in the store, but reject any that have an off aroma or are bruised and moldy. (A few black spots or a tiny bit of mold is usually no problem.) There are companies in Hawaii that ship organic papayas to the mainland.
STORAGE
Once the fruits ripen, they quickly turn to mush if left in a warm kitchen. You can slow this process for a couple of days if you place them in the fridge, but longer than that and they’ll lose quality fast. If you want to hasten the ripening of green papayas, place them in a closed paper bag. Papayas don’t get sweeter when they’re ripened at home, but they will develop that succulent texture that complements their flavor.
USES
If there is a perfect way to eat this fruit, it would have to be luscious slabs of melt-in-your-mouth papaya drizzled with fresh lime juice. I don’t care what you do to papaya or how you serve it, you won’t beat this simple treatment. The reason is that, texture-wise, papaya is luscious and creamy, but flavor-wise it is mild and slightly musky without much acidity. Lime juice, with its distinct flavor and sharp acidity, exactly fills in the gaps of papaya’s flavor profile.
That doesn’t mean that you should avoid other ways to use papaya. Pop the peeled, seeded flesh of a couple of ripe papayas in the blender, pour in 1⁄2 cup of orange juice and 1⁄2 cup of vanilla frozen yogurt and blend for a dreamy smoothie. Papaya contains the meat tenderizing enzyme papain, so the next time you’re marinating meat, add mashed ripe papaya to the marinade to give a subtle flavor and tenderize the meat nicely. In fact, the papain in papaya is so strong that you can’t use raw papaya in gelatin dishes, as the papain will prevent the gelatin from setting. ....read more
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