Photo by Gloria Zhang
Hiiiya! Your finger swipes across your iPhone’s screen as you sit patiently waiting for an appointment, as you sit anxiously during a long car ride, or as you try not to fall asleep to your professor’s monotone voice during lecture.
Who knew that not only slicing exotic fruits on a smartphone could be so exciting, but also that the fruits flashing before your eyes on a small screen represent actual exotic Asian fruits?
While Fruit Ninja allows one to slice starfruit, there are many other exotic fruits that the game fails to allow players to slice. Here is what you should be slicing:
Guava
Photo by Gloria Zhang
This pear-shaped fruit is more commonly known in the States. It is light green on the
outside and has white flesh. Now you may be thinking, “then isn’t guava just a pear?”
Although they may look alike, when you get to the heart of the fruit, you will see a great
difference in the type of seeds for the fruit. Guava seeds are cream-brownish color and
are quite delicious to chew on. In addition, the texture of the fruit, although crunchy, is
grainier than pear, and also has a slightly sweet and refreshing lighter flavor.
Pomelo
Photo by Gloria Zhang
The pomelo is a fruit that makes you work for its meat. It is difficult to peel with its thick
light green skin. Once you peel that off, you have to go through another layer of skin to
get to the meat, but it is almost impossible to extract all of the meat from the pomelo. In
terms of flavor, it is almost like a super-size version of grapefruit.
This is due to the citrus nature of pomelos, where there is a slightly sweet and sour taste
with a hint of bitterness when eaten. Pomelos come in pink meat and yellow-greenish
meat.
Longan
This fruit name literally means “dragon eye” in Chinese because the seed is round and
black, while the meat is a white-translucent color. Longan tastes just like lychee where
the fruit meat is slightly crunchy with a sweet aftertaste. There are many other purposes
for the fruit, like dried longan is used in Chinese herbal soup. However, beware of this
fruit, as like lychee, if you eat too much, you might start to feel sick.
Kumquat
Kumquats look like tiny oranges but their flavors actually are completely opposite to
oranges. When you bite into the skin and then into its meat, the flavors are quite complex.
There is a slightly bittersweet taste to the skin and when you reach the
center, usually sourness starts to overpower your mouth. For these reasons, kumquats are
very refreshing as an after meal snack.