Also known as pineapple guavas/guavasteen, Feijoas are a fruit shrub native to South America though increasingly grown in other parts of the world (including the United States, New Zealand, and Italy).
Feijoa fruits are green, egg sized, and they will fall off the tree upon ripening. You thus wait to pluck them off the plant if you wish to enjoy them best. On the inside, feijoas are juicy and they have flesh too that akin to that of pears.
Feijoas are a great flavor for a range of foods not least ice-cream, cereals, and drinks. You can find these supermarkets and shops though it does not have to be. As we will shortly explore, you can perfectly make up something of your own at home.
Feijoa Cake
What better way to start but cake. The ingredients for a feijoa cake include; lime, butter, vanilla extract, and feijoas. Each of these components brings with it some uniqueness that makes the end product even tastier. Lime helps with boosting the tanginess. This can be done by lemon too.
To bake, start by cutting up the feijoa and collect the inside of the fruits in a cup. The next step is to stir the collected elements usually by a fork. Add sugar, butter, eggs, zest and vanilla and then mix thoroughly. Now mix with flour whilst ensuring that no flour is left out.
Transfer to a cake tin and then to the oven. Once ready (turned golden that is), you can remove your cake and start on icing it.
Friands
The name here can be misleading. Friands are some of the easiest thing to prepare on this list of twenty. The necessary ingredients include; hazelnuts, lemon, feijoa and butter. This recipe as variations so depending on your taste, you may replace hazlenuts with either strawberries or cinnamon.
To start preparing, add icing sugar in a bowl, and then combine with hazelnuts and rice flour. Next, pour in white eggs, butter as well as zest. Place in tins, top with feijoa slices and transfer to the oven. Once ready, remove and place on a wire rack for cooling.
The recipe wells withcrème fraiche. And should you choose, you may have more feijoa slices in accompaniment too.
Feijoa Ice Cream
What is a flavor if it cannot support ice cream? Well, feijoa knows this secret. The ingredients here among others include; thickened cream, white sugar, feijoa, and glucose syrup. Instead of white sugar, castor sugar will work just fine too.
To prepare, collect the pulp from fruit and strain it and boil. Next, simmer for half an hour or so whilst stirring all the while. At low heating, add cream, sugar and syrup and stir through until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat then and add lime juice. Transfer to heat proof jug. You can then chill the mixture in a fridge for at least for hours. For better results, you could wait for even longer; overnight for instance.
Feijoa and Almond Turnover Pastries
We will talk about frozen sheets in this recipe. Make sure that they are used when very cold i.e. pick one at a time while leaving the others in a fridge. The ingredients here include; beaten egg, almond, feijoa, sugar, and sultana.
To prepare, whizz the almond in a food processor to formulate flour from it. Then add lemon zest, sultanas, sugar, cinnamon, and feijoas. Make circles from the sheet earlier mentioned with a saucer and then divide the feijoa mixture between the circles. Place on a tray and glaze with the eggs.
Transfer to the oven. Wait for thirty minutes before serving. Whipped cream is a perfect complement when it comes to serving this recipe.
Feijoa Crumble
Ingredients for this recipe include; butter, feijoa, ginger, desiccated coconut, and apples. Each of these plays a crucial role so you do not want to leave any out. Butter for instance, helps with ensuring that the crumble’s topping is crunchy. Should you be a vegan though, you may switch it with margarine instead.
Preparing feijoa crumble starts with mixing flour and sugar. Next, rub with butter to form bread crumbs (this is something that can also be done by the food processor).
Also, the mixing should not be until fine otherwise you will lose the crunching aspects of the crumble. Add coconut. Separately, collect feijoa pulp and mix it with apple cubes gotten from the fruit’s inside. Top the mixture over the crumbs formed earlier then transfer to an oven. Bake until golden brown.
Pork Ribs with Feijoa Marinade
Preparing this recipe takes quite the time though most of this has to do with waiting than the real preparation effort. The irony (or may be not) is that almost even starters in cooking will easily pull off the recipe.
The necessary ingredients among others include; mustard, marmalade, sherry, pork ribs, red wine vinegar, cumin etc. the mustard in this case is English mustard.
To prepare, first place all the ingredients in a food processor for thorough mixing. You can also use a blender though. Once you have a marinade, go ahead to coat the pork ribs with it. Refrigerate them for some good hours if possible, overnight. Transfer to an oven and bake.
Feijoa Muffins
If done well, these muffins can last for many months so you want to try them so you have them on you in case of anything. The necessary ingredients include; eggs, self-rising flour, vanilla extract, feijoas, and vegetable oil. The flour suggested can also be substituted with all-purpose flour.
To begin on preparation, mix brown sugar with the flour. Next, separately scoop the feijoa pulp and add to it oil, egg, zest and lime. Mix well possibly with a fork.
Now mix with the dry ingredients. Do not overwork however, lest the muffins become less chewy. Oil muffin pans and then transfer the batter therein. Bake for about twenty five minutes. You can remove the muffins from the oven while hot or you may wait for cooling.
Avocado, Pecan and Feijoa Guacamole
The recipe here is Mexican. Feijoa helps with adding a tanginess to everything. The necessary ingredients include among others; coarse salt, lime juice, coriander, ripe avocados, pecans, and feijoa. You may replace the pecans with peanuts though depending on what works best for you.
To prepare, mix tequila, lime juice, and feijoa. After, wait for anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour. During this time, you should place the pecans in an oven and bake until golden brown. Next, coat the pecans with the feijoa mixture, sprinkle salt and then heat.
Toss every now and then. Finally, char chilli in a hot pan until tender. Then chop it remove the seeds.
Feijoa Wine
Note that the water to be used in the wine making should be boiled, then filtered, and finally cooled at room temperature. Interestingly, there are not many other recipes to talk about but wine yeast, sugar and finally feijoa. Be sure to wash the Feijoa though.
To prepare, chop feijoas and then soak them in a container with water for at least for days. The container should be covered. Next, strain the feijoa in boiled muslin to make must. Dissolve sugar in comparatively low quantities of water then add to the must.
Now pour more water until the container is filled up. Add wine yeast to the mixture and then airlock the container. Wait for at least two weeks as that is the time that fermentation takes.
Feijoa Jam
Like the wine, feijoa jam does not require many ingredients. Lemon, feijoas, candied ginger, and white sugar are enough. You may use caster sugar instead of the white sugar though it is a more expensive alternative.
There is also another ingredient to think about i.e. ginger for its warmth especially though it is not a must.
To prepare, peel the tops of the feijoa and then chop it into dices. Boil these in water for at least fifteen minutes. Now add finely chopped ginger and lime juice.
Boil at very high temperature for five minutes. That is all. To ascertain that the jam is ready, scoop a spoonful and place it on a frozen plate. Press with your finger upon cooling. It should be sticky.
Smoked Fish & Feijoa Salad
This recipe has its origins in East Asia. The ingredients include; feijoa, red chili, extra virgin oil, smoked fish, Vietnamese mint, and lime juice. Suggestions for the fish to use is kingfish though you can try it out with your favorite type too. If you cannot get a hold of the mint suggested, it is alright for you to work with the regular.
To prepare, remove the skin and bones from the fish. Place in a bowl then add avocado slices, chili, lime juice, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Turn the ingredients in the bowl until they are mixed evenly. You could use your hands though this might be risky in case there were fish bones that went unseen.
Pickled Feijoa Skins
As you might have realized already, most of what we have been doing is about the inside of feijoa. This leaves us with the outside that many simply throw away. There are ways to use them though and this is one of them.
The necessary ingredients are; lemon, feijoa skins, cloves, salt, whole black peppercorns, apple cider peppercorns etc.
To make the pickle, you need a day’s head-start i.e. place the skins in water, add salt, and then refrigerate overnight. Dry out the water the following. Add vinegar, sugar, chili flakes, and vinegar to water and simmer at low heat.
Add lemon slices, peppercorns, and cloves. Simmer for a quarter of an hour and then add the skins. Simmer for another a quarter of an hour then remove from heat.
Feijoa Syrup
You can best think about the syrup as a refreshment. Like pickled skins, the syrup employs the skins of Feijoa. The necessary ingredients are; lime juice, water, feijoa skins, and sugar. Water will work so long as it is drinkable. About the sugar, it helps balance the bitterness that comes from the skins.
To start off, boil water then add sugar until it has dissolved. Simmer. Next, cut the flower tips off the feijoa and chop then add the pieces to the water.
Mix thoroughly before covering for at least thirty minutes. You should not delay this process any longer as doing so will have the syrup turn out extremely bitter. Turn off the heat then add the lime juice.
Feijoa Chutney
This recipe uses whole feijoas i.e. both the skin and the pulp. This is very rare indeed. It also lasts for quite a very long time. The necessary ingredients include; brown onions, feijoas, mustard seeds, brown sugar, lemon, etc. Brown onions can be replaced by any other onions.
To prepare, cut the feijoas and apples into small dices. Add zest lemon juice and chili. Add to a pan and cook for at least four hours. When ready, the chutney is thick brown.
All flavors should have melted already too and form one indistinguishable component. For serving, you can always consider cheese. Suggestions for you include Swiss, good old tasty, as well as camembert.
Feijoa and Apple Sorbet
This is for folks with sweet teeth. Unlike the ice cream tackled already however, feijoa and apple sorbet is relatively low in calories. The ingredients include; sugar syrup, lemon juice, feijoas, and apple sugar syrup. It is important that you use extremely ripe feijoas.
To prepare, heat the apple syrup along with sugar for five minutes. Place in a blender along with feijoas and lemon juice. Blend. Place in an ice cream maker next and churn until sorbet texture.
If at all you do not have an ice cream maker, then you should place in a container and place in a freezer. Wait until it almost gets frozen.
Feijoa Loaf
For those of you who have never tasted this loaf, the easiest reference would be banana bread. The ingredients to make the loaf include among others; eggs, baking powder, butter, cinnamon, feijoas, and milk. You could also substitute the cinnamon with allspice instead. The beauty is that doing so brings with it other components e.g. nutmeg and cloves.
To prepare, scoop the feijoa inside then add to it vanilla, and eggs. Next, melt butter then add the feijoas mixture as well as milk.
Time to introduce the rest of the ingredients and ensure that there is proper mixing. Bake until you can see the color brown. The cake can be eaten on its own though you should allow it to cool first.
Feijoa Cordial
The drinks already talked about involve fermentation. You do not however to always ferment if at you do not have the time, equipment etc. This is where Feijoa Cordial comes in. the necessary ingredients are water, fejioa skins, and sugar. The water should be boiled and hot.
To prepare, place the skins in a bowl and then add sugar. Pour in the water and cover with a lid. Allow to cool after which you should refrigerate. Strain out the skins and drink.
The longer you wait for the refrigeration the more tasty the cordial will get.
Other Feijoa Recipes
- Feijoa Fizz
- Feijoa Cheesecake
- Feijoa Curd