A Day at the Colombian Market

One of the best things about South America is the fruit. Almost everywhere you go, you find fruit that is far tastier and cheaper than anything you could possibly find back home. What's more, the farmers' markets are full of all kinds of strange regional fruits that you can't find anywhere else in the world, sometimes they are only native to a certain part of a country. Here I will show you what I found on market day in Villa de Leyva in Boyacá province, Colombia.

Let's start with something familiar: bananas (platanos) on the left, raspberries (moras) in the middle and tiny red plums (ciruelas) on the right no more than two inches wide. The bananas here are incredible, perfect flavour and consistency every time.

In South America, oranges (naranjas or mandarinas) come in different sizes, colours and levels of sweetness. The basket on the right contains oranges that are green through orange, all of which are ripe, with the orange ones having the most intense sweetness.
The fruit on the left is not oranges but lulo (naranjilla in Ecuador), one of my favourite native fruits. This fruit is unbelievably sour if you eat it by itself, but with some sugar and water and a a minute in the blender you get a delicious juice which is amazingly refreshing.

The yellow fruit in the middle is dragonfruit, called Pitaya in Colombia... 

...and this is what they look like inside. They have an odd, watery-sweet flavour to them, but they are very good for you.

Chinese Gooseberries, called Uchuva here.

Pineapples are everywhere in South America, and in Colombia they are always sweet and tangy.
Papaya (in the middle) are much larger here than back home. Colombians eat them constantly. The hole in the side is to show freshness and to give the vendors a way to cut off a slice for people to try.

Watermelon or Sandía is also very common here and makes a delicious snack in the Colombian heat.

Apologies for the blurry photo - one thing that I didn't expect to find here was Feijoas! They taste a little different to those in New Zealand, but having assumed they were native to Aotearoa it was a surprise to find them in Colombia.

Limes are everywhere in Latin America and they are very, very cheap. At the market these were a bargain at 12 for $1AUD. Unfortunately they don't have much gin in Colombia, so its hard to take advantage of this with a good G&T, but Colombians make up for this by mixing lime with almost everything else.

Here's a vendor ready to make an investment in the Australian housing market! Avocados (Aguacates or Paltas) come in varieties including the familiar Hass that you see in Western supermarkets...

...but also these smooth green ones. They have a similar flavour but tend to be a bit more difficult to judge their ripeness, which is why the top one is cut open. You also get yet another variety in some places which has a matte green skin but I didn't find them here.

Now for something a little weirder. This fruit is called Guanabana, and as you can see from the pineapple next to it, it is huge! The inside is white flesh with a delicious, almost custardy taste that contains black seeds the size of marbles. You can find a relative of this fruit called Chirimoya in Ecuador and northern Peru which is smaller and tastes even more delicious!

This is a type of passionfruit called Granadilla. Unlike passionfruits, garanillas have a hard skin that you can crush and tear to make a little bowl, with the flesh and seeds inside making a crunchy, sweet combination. They have a counterpart called maricuya which is very, very sour and soft on the outside. I suspect that passionfruit was created as a combination of the two, resulting in the sweet-sour taste we know of in the West. 

These yellow buddies are called starfruit in English or Carambolo in Spanish. You can eat them as soon as they turn yellow, but the longer you leave them, the sweeter you get. The one on the left is perfect, just on the edge of ripe, while the one on the right is just turning ripe and will taste a little bit sour.

These little guys are called Mamoncillo and as far as I can tell are unique to Colombia. To eat them, you bite the skin and squeeze gently...

...revealing a large stone with a small amount of translucent flesh around it. You pop this in your mouth, suck off the flesh and spit out the stone. They leave your mouth feeling a little furry so not everyone loves them. Me, I finished an entire bag!

These ones are very strange. They are called Tomate del Arbol, Tree Tomatoes, though I do not know if they are actually related to tomatoes. They have a very intense flavour which is impossible to eat on its own, but they contain an unbelievable amount of Vitamin C. The traditional cure for a cold in Colombia is to get a spoonful of honey, cut the top off a Tree Tomato, mix the honey with the fruit inside and drink the concoction. 

Now for some Veggies! Vegetables aren't very common in Colombia as the tropical soil leads to more production of fruits. On the left is yucca, a very popular root vegetable across northern South America. It can be eaten steamed or fried. On the right are savoury bananas or plantains. In Colombia, the word platano can refer to both sweet or savoury bananas, so if they sell both you sometimes need to specify platano salado or platano dulce

Another important root veg - potatoes! South America contains many different varieties of potatoes (or papas)  and you can find some of them in Colombia, though Peru has more variety still.

Corn or maiz is a staple food of many countries, particularly Peru. The corn here is not sweetcorn, it comes in many varieties, all of which I like much better than Western sweetcorn. The most common variety has large, fleshy kernels and goes well with some cheese, but you also find smaller, harder varieties that Colombians like to mix with soups.

Now for something a little different - cactuses! This is an entire Aloe Vera plant, which in Colombia is called savila. This was an absolute godsend when I got horribly sunburnt in the Caribbean. Chop it in half lengthways and get a friend to smear it on for instant relief.

If looking at all that healthy produce gave you a craving for something fried, look no further than the plancha at the back of the market. Here you see three different types of sausage: one pork, one beef, and my favourite, morcilla, the black blood sausage in the top left. All sausages come with a healthy portion of papas criollas, the potatoes underneath the meat.

Of course if you're still hungry, there's always Arepas - corn fritters, usually filled with cheese. Fresh ones are a favourite snack of Colombians and foreigners with poorly groomed facial hair.