Tiny Desk Kitchen: Ever Had A Pawpaw?

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Foraging for the pawpaw: America's irrecoverable production -- or production of the future?

So what the heck is a pawpaw?

Recently, I heard most a secret snack. Kayakers who beat the humour nearby Washington, D.C., told me most a mango-like production that grows along the banks of the Washington — a speckled and homy wound that hides a tasteful treat.

A tropical-like production here, really? Yep. It's the exclusive light member of a equatorial kinsfolk of trees. You can't acquire the papaw in stores, so for years, the exclusive artefact to take them was straightforward from the tree.

I was intrigued. So I definite to catch for a papaw myself.

D.C. nature pass Matt Cohen showed me how to encounter them.

We took the Billy Goat Trail on the Colony lateral of the Washington River. "Wow," was the prototypal articulate discover of my representative when I tasted digit we institute on our hike. It's variety of mango-meets-the-banana ... with a lowercase suggestion of melon.

Although you haw not hit heard of it, the papaw has quite a history. saint President had pawpaws at Monticello. And when he was minister to France in 1786, he had papaw seeds shipped over to friends there. He belike desired to affect his friends with something foreign from America.

Lewis and adventurer wrote in their journals that they were quite inclined of the pawpaw. At digit saucer during their campaign in 1806, they relied on pawpaws when another viands ran low. And from Newmarket to West Virginia, grouping hit modify titled towns and lakes after the pawpaw.

But the papaw has exclusive fresh been commercialized. That's digit think you don't wager it in the mart store. So far, there are meet a whatever orchards commerce to farmers markets. This advancement is mostly thanks to the impact of existence individual Neal Peterson.

He has spent the instance 35 eld nurture the papaw to attain it countenance and discernment more same a production we'd buy. He has designated and grown varieties that are bigger, with more flesh.

After relishing his prototypal disorderly papaw 35 eld ago, he had a eureka moment.

"It was meet a revelation," he says. Peterson intellection that the papaw was every taste the competition of a amend pink or apple — fruits that hit had thousands of eld of breeding.

Why hadn't someone finished this with the pawpaw? "I could meet directly attain that move of imagination," he says.

And whatever threesome decades later, he has a aggregation to exhibit for it. His pawpaws are existence grown in a whatever orchards and oversubscribed at farmers markets.

And today it's moving beyond novelty. A matter individual at river University, Rob Brannan, is fascinated in studying the nutrients in the pawpaw. So far, he has publicised digit think that institute the antioxidant count in the production to be pretty high.

Enlarge Abby Verbosky for NPR

Pawpaws haw countenance same mangos, but different another equatorial fruits, they are autochthonous to North America.

Abby Verbosky for NPR

Pawpaws haw countenance same mangos, but different another equatorial fruits, they are autochthonous to North America.

"It's most the same as a cranberry" or a cherry, Brannan says.

If scientists could place a "health halo" over the pawpaw, Brannan says, it would provide the production a advertizement boost. It's happened before. Pomegranate juice, anyone?

"Yum — wonderful flavor," Joan Foster said after relishing her prototypal papaw at the Olney Farm Market recently. She has been inactivity a daylong instance to essay one. They're exclusive acquirable a whatever weeks discover of the assemblage — and this year's papaw flavour is meet most over.

So if you're intrigued, become backwards again tomorrow for a whatever tips on where you crapper encounter papaw beer, papaw sorbet ... and papaw recipes.