When I travel abroad, my first order of business is to explore the local markets in search of unusual produce. It is my entrée into an unknown country, an invitation to freak out over a new landscape, culture and cuisine. There are so many rare fruits and vegetables that are just not bred for import – whose window of edibility is so small, it could never turn a profit if crated, transported and stocked in our local supermarkets.

Since our arrival in Mexico City on Christmas Eve, my husband and I have visited 1-2 farmer’s markets a day. I have oggled the huitlacoche, giant morels and ant larvae. I have bought passion fruit, local honey, teeny tiny mangos and all kinds of unusual mandarins. But when I visited the Jamaica market with local artist Raul Ortega Ayala (whose salad is coming soon to the blog) he introduced me to a very strange fruit indeed: the Sapote Negro, or Black Sapote. You might be familiar with White Sapote, but this is a beast of another kind, and often referred to as “chocolate pudding fruit.”

You only purchase these obscenely indulgent fruits once they are so ripe they begin to crack, oozing a dense , opaque black jam that best resembles a melted brownie, or if you are in a Mexican frame of mind, molé paste. When I spotted them in the market and inquired after their use, Raul offered to prepare Sapote Negro with mandarin for dessert, without revealing the full full intensity of that process. Back at home, he split the seemingly rotten blob, and painstakingly removed each seed before pushing the flesh through a fine mesh sieve. The juice of a freshly picked mandarin was squeezed into the bowl, and the contents whipped lightly with a fork. The resultant light as air “pudding,” his daughter’s favorite, was served as a simple dessert. Sweet, but not saccharine, with a flavor akin to prune, Sapote Negro actually has 4x as much vitamin C as an orange. I could imagine it whipped with avocado or a little whipping cream to take it to the next level, but it really was damned near perfect on its own.