Mangosteens

The mangosteen is a round, purple fruit slightly smaller than a tennis ball. To eat it, you can peel away the brittle, moist rind with your palms to reveal the pure-white delicacy inside. The bitter rind is inedible, and the fruit comes in the form of variously sized wedged segments, the largest of which may hold a solitary seed. The number of segments usually varies from 4 to 8 which is matched by the number of points on the protrusion from the underside of the fruit; therefore, you can discover how many segments you are in for before you open the mangosteen. Mangosteen trees will only grow (and more importantly, fruit) in ultra-tropical zones with consistent temps above 38C. The fruit can take up to 100 days to form and ripen


The seeds of the mangosteen are considered "recalcitrant." This means that they are very short-lived and must be kept moist or they die almost as soon as they dry out.

Mangosteen trees are dioecious, meaning that there are male trees and female trees. The only problem with this is that to date, no one has been able to find a male tree anywhere in the world so if they exist, they are quite rare. Globally, it is possible that there have never been any male mangosteen trees. This places the entire burden on the female tree to perpetuate the species. No males means no pollen, even though the female flower contains rudimentary sterile anthers where pollen would normally be found. Without pollen, there is no way to fertilize the female flower and create true seeds with variable genetic traits. Instead, the female mangosteen trees succeed in perpetuating the species by a process known as agamospermy. The wall lining the ovary of the female flower, the nucellus, supplies the material that will then develop within the fruit segments and becomes what is effectively an asexually produced seed. As a result of this, it produces a clone of the mother tree.

Wiki says:

There is a legend about Queen Victoria offering a reward of 100 pounds to anyone who could deliver to her the fresh fruit. Although this legend can be traced to a 1930 publication by fruit explorer, David Fairchild, it is not substantiated by any known historical document. In his publication, "Hortus Veitchii", James Herbert Veitch says that he visited Java in 1892, "to eat the Mangosteen. It is necessary to eat the Mangosteen grown within three or four degrees of latitude of the equator to realize at all the attractive and curious properties of this fruit.

organic mangosteens from Cape Trib now available at Heng's Organic Fruit and Veg, in Kerrie Road, Glen Waverley. Stop whatever you're doing and go there now. I guarantee it will be worth it.

Called "The Queen of Fruit", Mangosteens are still quite rare. And expensive. If you can get your hands on then, they are worth the $$$. Spectacular looking, with a taste that is quite indescribable. The edible arils have the consistency of a lychee, the taste of something like a peach crossed with a grape, and the perfume is sweet, almost strawberry-ish.

Apparently you can brew a tea from the rind, but I will content myself with the luscious fruit.

SOLE Butcher.

Kerrie Road Butchers
6 Kerrie Rd
Glen Waverley, VIC 3150
(03) 9802 0857

I often rave about my local butcher. When I first started shopping SOLE, he was the first person I approached with my tentative "Where is this stuff actually from?" questions. Instead of withering my budding SOLE shoots, he enthusiastically answered me, and gave me the confidence to delve deeper, and become more confident in approaching my providers. And it recently occurred to me, that I talk about him a lot, but I've never given him a shout out. I've reviewed spices from interstate, olive oil from overseas, but never given my humble, local butcher a shout out.

All snags made on the premises

And here's the thing. A few people who've gone to John, as a result of reading this blog, get back to me surprised that it's so "normal". I don't quite know how to respond to that. Maybe any butcher associated with me should have Nag Champa burning, statues of Amateratsu in the window, Baba Yaga flavoured sausages and wrap their roasts in Feminist coloured paper.

And here's the thing. In offering to take some snaps and do this post for the guys, I realised how absolutely bloody normal the place is. It's a bog standard suburban butcher shop. There is nothing overtly SOLE (whatever that means) about it.

It's the questions that you have to ask, that unlocks this unprepossessing shop's SOLE.

All the beef and lamb are sourced from Cardinia, the chooks from the Mornington Pen. They stock free range chooks and eggs from Lilydale, and their pork comes from Hastings. They smoke all their own small goods on the premises, make their own snags (we're having the chicken and asparagus tonight), corn their own beef. They do a sensational range of boerwors sausages and biltong (dried jerky, South African style). They stock the ubiquitous marinated chicken wings and schnitzels, but their standard T-bone is some of the best beef eating around.

All pretty bog standard stuff. The difference with the guys at Kerrie Road, is that they have realised that "We travel all over Victoria to bring you the best!" ISN'T necessarily the answer the punters today want to hear.