If you live where guavas grow, you are a lucky, lucky person. Also lucky, in a time of global (for now?) trade, is the fruit shopper’s proximity to guavas farmed south of the border, as well as domestically in Florida and in California. Stateside, guavas seem less familiar to anyone without a subtropical or tropical roots, and I see the fruit languishing, sometimes, in grocery displays. I try to compensate by stocking up on them weekly during winter, to take home to eat raw and ripe, and also to make one of my favorite fruit desserts: poached guavas, eaten chilled, with spoonfuls of their fragrant syrup.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
Growing up in South Africa, where fresh guavas were (and are) omnipresent, the fruit was a taken-for-granted staple, often perfuming our home’s kitchen with their distinctively vivid aroma. Canned guavas, tenderly rosy and sold in every supermarket, were a staple childhood dessert, served cold with cream.
The common guava is Psidium guajava, a small tree that can be grown in full sun in USDA zones 9 through 11. It is probably native to Central or South America, although its domestication and origin are still being studied. Different cultivars offer fruit that ranges from petite to hefty, with flesh that may be white or pink. Guavas are technically berries, with edible pulp surrounding small seeds, which can be swallowed with no ill effect. They are exceptionally high in vitamin C, leaving citrus in the dust by comparison. Ripe guavas are sweetly fragrant, gelatinous towards the center, and slightly grainy—like a pear—closer to the skin. Unripe, they are firm and more acidic, and are enjoyed in Southeast Asia as a raw, sour vegetable (like green mangoes), dipped in a hot-sour-salty-sweet sauce.
The guavas I see most often in supermarkets are usually small and sold while pale green. Asian grocers may sell softball-sized hard, green fruit. After a few days on the kitchen counter they begin to ripen: Their skins grow thinner, the fruit softer, and that distinctive guava perfume, like the tropics in full bloom, permeates every room. To enjoy them raw, either eat them whole, just like that (the skins are edible), or peel them, slice them, sprinkle them with lemon juice and a little sugar, and attack them with a spoon or fork. Or, slice them in half and scoop out their delicious innards with a spoon.
The ripe fruit responds well to cooking, too. I first ate savory roasted guavas at Babylonstoren, a wine farm near Cape Town, South Africa. They were served very simply, with thyme oil and flaky salt. Back in Brooklyn I adapted the method to accommodate mugwort leaves and mugwort salt.
