Tropical Fruit Cookbook (A Kolowalu Book) [Hardcover]

Marilyn Rittenhouse Harris (Author), Charlene K. Smoyer (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although this reads rather like a textbook, Harris has assembled an excellent compendium of recipes for common and not-so-common tropical fruits. The book is divided in half: the first half deals with more commonly found fruits like avocados, coconuts and pomegranates, while the second half deals with what Harris calls new-market fruits, meaning fruit that is not well-known outside its growing area, such as jackfruit, sapote and longan. Each chapter starts with a brief history of the fruit, its uses and when it first appeared in Hawaii. Harris's recipes are thorough and well organized. There is a very useful glossary of basic fruit-cooking terms. She allows for canned or frozen fruit when the fresh is unobtainable. This is another single-subject cookbook that can provide a complete menu. Waikiki duck with lychee champagne punch, and macadamia salad dressing, are but a few of the recipes Harris provides. Frozen yogurt guava pops is another good one. Most of these fruits, Harris writes, appeared in Hawaii after Captain Cook's voyage. Some, like the pineapple, became an economic staple in the islands. Others became a part of history--namely, the breadfruit, which played a role in the 1788 mutiny on board the Bounty.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr (July 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082481441X
• ISBN-13: 978-0824814410
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #437,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy-to-prepare, healthful recipes which are also exotic., June 29, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Tropical Fruit Cookbook (A Kolowalu Book) (Hardcover)

Good coverage of how to choose, use, and store tropical fruits. Includes tropical fruits which are common and new to the marketplace. Beautiful illustrations, hardcover, and a quality book

4.0 out of 5 stars Too good to be good for you, February 8, 2011

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tropical Fruit Cookbook (A Kolowalu Book) (Hardcover)

Marilyn Harris, author of "Mangos, Mangos, Mangos: Recipes and Art from Hawaii," is doing her best to educate Americans to fruits beyond the apple and the banana.

I generally don't think of "cooking" tropical fruits, except coconut, plantain, breadfruit and mango, but not all the recipes here call for heating.

There is a mix of the trendy (fruit salsas and the like) with the traditional (chutneys) here, with many encouragements to eat the stuff because it is so good for us.

No doubt it is good for us, though that's hard to believe when it tastes so good.

Sweetsop is a fine example. One soon learns to judge when it is ready, and it can be eaten with a spoon, like a light custard, or just slightly frozen, in which case it turns into something like a shave ice.

The fruits covered (and elegantly painted by Charlene Smoyer) are avocado, banana and plantain, breadfruit, starfruit, 10 kinds of citrus, coconut, guava, lychee, macadamia (not a fruit), mango, papaya, passion fruit, persimmon, pineapple and pomegranate; plus, in a section on "new market fruits," the four "moyas," durian, jackfruit, mammee apple, mangosteen, longan, rambutan, sapodilla and sapote.

Harris also includes "kamaaina (Hawaiian) favorites" star apple, coffee, mountain apple, ohelo, poha and tamarind.

I compared this list with the fruits covered in Jane Grigson and Charlotte Knox's "'Cooking with Exotic Fruits and Vegetables," which was published in London and gives a sample of what is regularly available there. The English book omits avocado, mac nuts (possibly because they are not considered a fruit), pineapple (not exotic enough?), durian, jackfruit, mammee apple, longan, sapote and all the "kamaaina favorities" except tamarind.

However, Grigson and Knox include several fruits not in Harris' book: sebesten, screw pine (pandanus keys), betel, roselle, prickly pear and kiwi.

Neither book has loquat, tree tomato, Surinam cherry, monstera, ackee, Indian almond, Hawaiian raspberry, carob or cacao -- all available in Hawaii, where I live.