Fruit Galettes

I do this funny thing when I shop.  If I see something I like, I don’t buy it.  I take a picture of it on my phone, and then I consider buying it for about 3 months.  (This is not the case with food.  If I see a food I like, it’s in the cart, through the check-out lane, and eaten on the drive home.)  If I still want it after 3 months, I go back and buy it. As cost-savvy as that may seem, I actually don’t advise that shopping method.  Seasons change, and things in retail disappear to mysterious outlets forever and ever. 

One instance of a successful 3-month postponed purchase is my Tartine cookbook, the aforementioned cookbook that I've been reading on the beach.  I bought it about a year ago when I was living in Atlanta, and proceeded to bake my first pastry, ever.  I adventurously chose Fruit Galettes. It took me almost 7 hours. My BFF roommate woke up to a note I’d deliriously written at 3 AM making some terrible Harry Potter joke about house elves. That was a little over a year ago.

I decided to give them another go.  We received a shipment of blue velvet apricots at work – designing for a grocery store has its perks. The general consensus was “Blue Velvet Apricot? AKA, a plum?” Yeah, sort of.  It looks like a plum, but it tastes almost like a salty apricot.  I’m not a fan of apricots because they aren’t very sweet, but the fact that these are slightly salty brings out the subtle sweetness and it is just delectable.  (slightly salty subtle sweetness, say that five times fast.)

The Tartine recipe yields a dozen single galettes, or 2 pie-sized galettes OR 1 pie-sized and 6 single. I chose the 6-to-1 combo.  I paired the blue velvet apricots with blueberries for the singles.  I was really bummed that I ran out of apricots for the last 2, and had only blueberries to fill them with, but this turned out not to be a terrible thing. The larger galette waited patiently in the freezer for the maximum of 3 weeks to be a delicious cinnamon apple galette with hazelnut crumble for July 4th when my favorites came to visit the islands :) Note: It didn't get photographed. 

As I said, the blueberry-and-more-blueberry galettes were a supposed let-down. Because of their boringess, I decided to jazz them up with a lemon vanilla cream on top and, oh my holy crap, it was lick-the-plate-clean good. In the end, I was sad to have only two.

Fruit Galettes by Elisabeth M. Prueitt &Chad Robertson in Tartine

For the dough

2 cups Unsalted butter, cubed, very cold

1 cup Water, very cold

1 1/2 tsp. Salt

2 1/3 cups All-Purpose Flour

2 2/3 cups Pastry Flour

Filling

About 6 cups of Fruit, cut-up depending on fruit/size, sauteed if needed

Granulated or brown sugar sprinkled to taste

Lemon juice if desired to add 

Egg Wash

2 Large Eggs Yolks

2 Tbsp. Heavy Cream

Granulated Sugar sprinkled

To make the dough, cut the butter into 1 inch cubes, and place them in the freezer. Measure the water, dissolve some salt into it, and put it in the freezer as well. Chill for about 10 minutes.

Measure all of the flour onto your work surface.  It is not necessary to mix your flours at this point, as they will become well mixed as the dough is being made.  Spread the flour out into a rectangle about 1/3” deep. Scatter the butter cubes over the flour, toss a little bit of the flour over the butter so that your rolling pin won’t stick, and then begin rolling.  When the butter begins to flatten into long, thin pieces, use a bench scraper to scoop up and fold the sides of the rectangle so that it is again the size that you started with. Repeat this rolling-scraping 3 or 4 times.

Make a well in the center of your dough.  Pour the water into the well and begin to cut it into the dough using the bench scraper – folding the sides into the center and “cutting” the water into the dough. Keep scraping and cutting until the dough is shaggy mass.  Shape the dough then into a rectangle about 10” x 14”. Lightly dust the top with flour, roll out the rectangle until it 50% bigger. Fold to reshape to original size, roll out to 50% larger and fold back to size again.  Do this 3-4 times until you have a smooth and cohesive dough.  You should have a neat rectangle measuring about 10”x14”.

Transfer the dough to a large baking sheet.  Cover with plastic wrap, and chill well for about an hour.

While the dough is chilling, prepare your fruit. Hull berries, pit peaches and cut, pit apricots and half or quarter, sauté apples or pears, etc.

Remove dough from refrigerator. Divide into 2 equal portions if making pie-sized galettes, or 12 equal portions if making individual galettes. To roll a circle from what is roughly a square, start with the dough positioned as a diamond in front of you, with the handles of the pin at two points of the square. Roll from the center towards each end, flattening the center, but not the two points that are nearest and farthest from you – leave those two points thick. Rotate and repeat with the thick points. You should have a square that has little humps in between the pointy corners.  Roll out the thicker areas, and you will begin to see a circle forming.  Keep rolling until the dough is a little more than 1/8” thick for large galettes (14” diameter), or a little thinner for individual galettes (6”-7” diameter). To transfer the large galettes to a baking sheet, fold into quarters to ensure that it will not break. Transfer individual circles carefully. Chill until firm, 10 minutes.

Fill the centers of the circles with fruit leaving a 2” diameter on large galettes, or a 1” diameter on individual galettes.  Taste the fruit for sweetness to determine how much sugar you should use to sweeten it. Sprinkle sugar, typically 2-4 tbsp. for large or 1-2 tsp. for small. You may also want to add a squeeze of lemon juice to some fruits if you feel it necessary for taste (blueberries, blackberries, apples, pears). Fold in the sides of the circles to partially cover the fruit, being sure not to leave any valleys for fruit juice to leak out. Chill until firm, 10 minutes.

While chilling, preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and make the egg wash. To make the egg wash, whisk together the egg yolks and cream. Brush the egg wash over the pastry edges, and sprinkle them with granulated sugar.

You can bake the galettes immediately, hold them unwrapped for a couple of hours in the refrigerator, or you can skip the egg wash/sugar, wrap the galettes air-tight, and freeze them for up to 3 weeks. When ready to bake if previously frozen, remove from freezer, brush with egg wash, sprinkle with sugar and bake immediately.

Bake the galettes until the crust has visibly puffed and baked to a dark brown, and the juice from the fruit is bubbling inside. 45-60 minutes for large galettes, and 40-50 minutes for small galettes. Rotate the baking sheets 180 degrees and switch the baking sheets between racks at the midway point to ensure even browning. If you are baking them straight from the freezer, add 10 minutes to your baking time. If the pastry is browning too quickly, reduce the oven temp to 350 degrees, or place foil over the tops of the galettes. Remove from the oven and serve hot, warm, or room temp.

Thanks for reading, now go bake some galettes!

A

A Grilled Cheese of Manliness

All of these goodies that I’ve been baking lately have been quite feminine; sweet and darling. That’s not to say that a dude wouldn’t eat these things.  (I know for a fact that there is one guy in particular who is very disappointed that he’s not here to enjoy them.) It is to say that there is always a need for balance. I needed to make something macho and manly. Rub some dirt in it, all that jazz.

On average, it requires about a five minute conversation with me to realize that I’ve got a thing for cheese.  I’m pretty vocal about it.  On my first date with Brian, I asked if we could order the cheese plate appetizer, and then proceeded to talk about cheese for the next 20 to 30 minutes. A few weeks later, because he is the gift-giver to end all gift-givers, he gave me THREE cheese journals to document the various cheeses that I try, so naturally, I’m required to always buy all the cheeses, right? Right! My most recent purchase was an Italian cheese called L’ottavio, otherwise known as beer cheese.  I repeat: beer cheese.

L’ottavio cheese contains flecks of malted barley.  During the curing process, the rind is brushed with brown ale and more malted barley. The result is the smell of a local pub and the taste of a nice pint of beer. Let me emphasize that "smell of a local pub" isn't a very pleasant smell.  You're going to want to triple or quadruple bag this block of cheese to contain the smell in your fridge.

In my cheese-journal, I noted that this cheese is kind of “unpairable." I usually like to pair a nice fruit or jelly or meat with the cheeses that I try, but this one really seemed to want to stand alone.  But then, "ah HA!" This is a manly cheese here. It needs manly compliments, not fru-fru things like fruits and French jams. 

It needs manly compliments like BACON.

What followed is the macho-est, manliest grilled cheese you’ll ever eat.

Behold, the Beer & Bacon Grilled Cheese Sandwich.  (Note: I did not rub dirt in it.)

The Beer and Bacon Grilled Cheese Sandwich 

2 slices of your bread of choice, I used Buckwheat

Sliced L'ottavio cheese 1/4" thick to cover one slice of bread

3 to 6 slices of natural bacon, depending on bread size

• Heat deep cast iron skillet to medium heat, then turn to low. Throw on your bacon and cook it low and slow, constantly moving around so it doesn't stick. (It's best to use a grease shield if you have one. I don't...womp womp.)
• While your bacon cooks, cut necessary slices of cheese and spread butter on the two outer sides of your bread slices.
• Once bacon is cooked, remove to a paper towel. Drain all but one teaspoon of the grease. The remaining grease will make your bread crispier, and will give your sandwich more taste.
• Set a slice of bread butter-side down. Top with your cheese and cooked bacon, and top with your other slice of bread, butter side up. 
• Once the cheese begins to melt, flip your sandwich so it begins to melt through the bacon. 
• Continue flipping until both sides are crispy and golden.
• Slice into halves and enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

A

Frootshoot in the Caribbean

A refresher course:

Fruit-shoot (/fro͞ot - SHo͞ot/) noun :: Amanda's term for a photo-shoot during which she dissects/murders various fruits for photographic analysis.  This process often advances to hours of editing before creating a graphically-pleasing collage.

As any new culture does, moving to the Caribbean has exposed me to new foods.  Here are some tropical goodies:

Breadfruit 

A food staple throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, the breadfruit emerges on flowering trees that can grow up to 85 feet tall.  The fruit's name is derived from the texture of the cooked, moderately ripe fruit, which has a potato-like flavor, similar to freshly baked bread. It is high in starch and is traditionally eaten as a substitute for rice.  There are tons of ways to prepare breadfruit, whether roasted and sliced as a nice side dish, or made into breadfruit chips (better than potato chips!), or boiled and served as a main dish with scraped coconut and chilies. 

Fun fact: When you remove a breadfruit from the tree, you have to set it top-down because there will be a fair amount of sap that needs to drain out first...or else your cutting board and knife will be forever sticky. *eyeroll*
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadfruit

Passion Fruit 

The passion fruit is widely grown around the world.  It is round to oval in shape and can be either yellow or dark purple - a fact that I did not know.  I took photos of a purple-skinned fruit, and the next week, our selection was yellow! There aren't many things that you can bite into for the first time and have your eyes spring wide open causing you to immediately dive in for bite #2.  The passion fruit is one of those rare things. I had never tasted one before, and the taste and texture blew my mind.  It's like a ball full of candy, really. 

Fun fact: Passion fruit is so called because it is one of the many species of Passion Flower, the national flower of Paraguay. 
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passiflora_edulis

Otaheite, Jamaican Apple
First, a little back story.  When I studied in Taiwan for 3 months, I discovered that one of my favorite fruits is a Wax Apple or a Bell Fruit - it has two names.  Then! I found out that it actually has 3 names, or so I thought.  I've not been able to find once since; I pick through every farmer's market I go to - I thought for sure I'd find it at one of the two international markets in Atlanta - nope! Then one day after moving here, I was talking about this fruit with my coworkers, and showed them a picture, and they all exclaimed "Otaheite!" "...Oh, whatawhat?" They all got so excited that they had helped me track down this fruit at long last, and that all along it was actually a Jamaican Apple, or in Jamaica, an apple. 
Sadly, I have to report that, though it is yummy, this is not the same as the Wax Apple and Bell Fruit that I had in Taiwan.  They look exactly the same, so they have to be relatives! The Otaheite has a very light and fluffy texture inside with crisp, mild apple-like taste. The Wax Apple packs a punch with apple taste, and has a crunchy, airy texture like a pear. *mouth waters and the search continues*

Thanks for reading!
A

Jam Shortbread Cookies

The weather has been strange these days.  When I moved to the Caribbean, the South had only just become chilly.  My body seemed to accept the lack of seasons; the prolonged, never-ending summer.  
There's the saying "April showers bring May flowers," but that doesn't exist here. Instead it marches more to the beat of "Well, May rolls around and then there is rain and only rain forever and ever, the end." More specifically, rainy season (otherwise scarily known as Hurricane Season *shutters*), lasts from May to November, and with it comes sporadic showers and storms that come and go whenever they please. (Also, giant land crabs?! Land crabs that knock on your door in the middle of the night!? I digress: another story for another day.)

The sky has become a temperamental patchwork of clouds, but more often than not, it's overcast. These overcast skies are the "strange."  I see the overcast skies, I feel the familiar tropical heat, the usual humidity thick enough to cut with a butter knife, but deep inside, outside of my control, my mind is perceiving these skies as the seasonal change it's used to. A seasonal change I never realized how much I required. 
Overcast, dreary skies have always brought with them bright pea-coats and knit scarves and brown boots. Detailed Jack-o-Lanterns and too much candy. Smokey fire pits and an ice cold beer. And Momma's pie and cookies. And family and Christmas trees. But it's none of these things. This year's overcast skies are hot, and it's just me and my little apartment and unwanted land crab visitors. The weather has been strange, and I've been strange - in this weird funk that I just can't shake. Missing him, missing them, and craving cold-weather cookies and things. 

So, in a fairly successful attempt to "shake it," I made said cookies, and I shared them with some of my Cayman family. 
I decided that I was craving Jam Cookies. And then, as always, I could not decide on just one way to do it, resulting in 4 variations of jam cookies. Behold:

Note :: That top-left Strawberry Preserves variation was supposed to be salted caramel, but the caramel had other diabolical plans.

Old-Fashioned Jam Shortbread Cookies from The Cafe Sucre Farine
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 c. pure cane sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract (or 2 tsp. vanilla bean paste, or beans scraped from one vanilla bean - I used extract.)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. all-purpose flour

• Preheat oven to 350F. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. Set aside.
• Beat butter and sugar until soft and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add salt and vanilla extract and mix for a few seconds to combine. 
• Add flour and mix for 1-2 minutes, (stopping a few times to scrape the sides of the bowl) until large crumbs form. Pour mixture out onto a work surface and knead several times until a smooth ball forms. 
• Scoop small balls of dough, about 2 tablespoons each. Roll the ball in your palms to form smooth, round balls.  (If you find that you are having trouble rolling the dough, refrigerate for 10 minutes, then proceed.) Place dough balls on prepared cookie sheets, spacing 2 inches apart and pressing on each one just a bit with the palm of your hand to be about 1/2" thick. 
• The next step is really completely up to you and what you plan to do with your cookies. I had over 40 small cookies. I flattened them each with my palm, considered flattening more with the base of a cup, but decided that I liked more of a dome.  My plan was to have a dozen jam sandwiches (using 24 cookies), a dozen indented salted caramel cookies, and have the leftovers as regular iced shortbread cookies. I indented the necessary amount, and used a fork to make cute ruffled textures along all of the edges.
• Note: when you make an indentation, you can use your thumb or the back of a spoon. If your cookie cracks along the edges, which it will, just push the dough back together. Your indentation should, in theory, be 1/2" in diameter.
• Place sheet pans with prepared cookies in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes.  This will keep them from spreading out too much while baking.
• Bake for 15-18 minutes or until beginning to turn golden at bottom edges. If you've indented your cookies, when cookies come out of the oven, you can reinforce the indentations a bit, if needed. 
• Remove to a wire rack to cool slightly. 

As I said, I had planned to use salted caramel, but that didn't work out.  I've concluded that I need a candy thermometer, and pronto.  My caramel cooked just seconds too long, and hardened and turned into Werther's Originals; equally as yummy, but nonfunctional for what I required. This just meant I was going to have a lot more jam sandwiches. 

I chose two flavors, and to differentiate between the two, I cut holes in the tops of half of them.  This was no easy task, and I broke numerous cookies.  I suggest that you bake larger cookies if you're aiming to cut shapes in them, because small ones just barely cooperate. (To cut the holes, I used a tiiiny tiny-bladed knife to carve a square, and then I spun my knife in that square to drill it into a circle.  And then I ate the leftover shortbread crumble because of course I did.  

The carved sandwiches housed Dickinson's Pure Pacific Mountain Strawberry Preserves, and the solid sandwiches were filled with Bonne Maman Red Currant Jelly. I topped the cookies with a simple powdered sugar icing.

 And here, I leave you with this: the failed caramels of deliciousness.

Next up might be some FrootShoots!
Thanks for reading,
A

Lemon Poppyseed Muffin Frustrations

You know how something can happen one way, and always happen that way, and then when you try to point it out to someone, it doesn’t happen that ONE time, and you just look ridiculous? That’s kind of what has gone down here.  Over the past 6 months, I’ve been taking on baking projects and photographing their results with seemingly no effort, no trouble, only deliciousness.  When I blogged about how I was doing these cooking things, and proceeded to bake my next recipe, it did not go as planned.

I had some lemons leftover from a sudden craving of lemon shortbread cookies last week.  I thought I could make some sort of lemon roasted fish or chicken, but lacked both. When you work for a grocery store, the last thing you want to do on the weekend is go grocery shopping, so I decided I’d use what I had on-hand.  I'd make another sweet – this time more on the breakfast-y side of things: Lemon Poppyseed Muffins.

I pinterested and compared quite a few recipes, and decided to go with this one.  You’ll notice it calls for sour cream, but you see, I did not have any sour cream. I know from baking cakes that this is to add moisture, so I didn't want to skip it, thus began a painstaking search for sour cream substitutions. I watched this video with wide eyes, and I ransacked my pantry and refrigerator for anything on the line up. I had lemon juice, and I had milk that was dated 4 days prior, and I had half-and-half and butter, and that was it.  No buttermilk, no whipping cream, nothing that anything actually called for. I decided I’d try two options: first, I’d try the whipping cream with lemon juice method…except I only had half-and-half.  After 5 minutes, I gave up on that ever thickening. So, I decided I’d use the ridiculous amount of butter with aged milk.

I carried on with the recipe.  When it came time to add the "sour cream," I realized that I didn’t know how to add it.  Did I need to melt the butter? Cream it? Softened or chilled? In a very split-second decision, I put the milk in a bowl and then put the whole softened stick of butter in the milk and turned to mixer up to full speed. What the heck was I thinking? I know what I was thinking. I was hungry, and I had stalled for far too long regarding the sour cream already. The result was a clumpy weird cottage-cheese-looking liquid, because duh, fat doesn't mix into liquid like that. I dumped it into the batter anyway. It didn’t seem to matter much. “It’ll just make clumpy pockets of butter if anything!” Into the muffin tins and into the oven they went!

While they were baking, I was getting creative. I always like to jazz up a recipe. Sometimes something is perfect just the way the recipe card says, and if you tweak it, it doesn't taste like Momma's, but always doing everything by the book would be quite dull. Usually, if a lemon poppyseed muffin is topped, it’s with a simple sugar lemon glaze. That is so last week (...literally, I put lemon glaze on my shortbread cookies last week). I had some mascarpone that was dying to be used up, so I decided to make a vanilla mascarpone glaze – a delicious stroke of genius! I used this mascarpone icing recipe, (again with the whipping cream! I used the half-and-half, but I'll have you know that there is now whipping cream in my fridge, sheesh) and put it on the muffins as they were just out of the oven so that the icing would melt immediately, making a glaze instead. I set them back in the oven for the icing/glaze to get a little crunch to it (and I didn’t want the muffins getting soggy). It worked!..with one set-back. Side story:

At home in Alabama, as with anywhere, Spring bounces into season and with it, a not-so-thin dusting of pollen. You suffer through the yellow coating on your car, your shoes, your porch, because there is no other option, and when the dusting has passed, you hose down all the things.  Whenever we hose down the back porch, the waterproofing causes the water to bead up on the planks of wood, and each liquid bead holds up this gross, thick film of yellow.

The muffins were so yummy and delicious with this slight crunch from the glaze on top, but the combination of colors of the yellow lemon muffin with the black/gray poppy seeds and the tan icing, had given the muffins this look like they were topped with that weird pollen-water from the back porch.

Ok, so they don't look that bad, but you're talking to a perfectionist here. I thought I’d just broil them a tiiiiiny bit longer to give the tops a toasty brown color to mask the yellow. 

And then I forgot about them.

Dinner starvation was creeping up on me. While cooking a delicious Niman Ranch Apple Gouda Sausage, those would-be adorable creations were getting quite black. I tried to mask the black with my mascarpone icing-glaze that had now gotten to be a weird mashed-potatoes consistency. 

I really gave up at this point, and I messaged my coworkers that they were going to eat a lot of burnt muffins in the morning. The mascarpone is really what burned, so the muffins below were fine. Nonetheless, this perfectionist apologized profusely to each coworker as they took one to eat it.

All of that being said, I promise to deliver inspiring kitchen stories at some point, but you have you start somewhere! I'll usually include recipes at the end of my posts, but I don't really feel like I have the right to instruct you on this one, so follow the links if you wish.

Thanks for reading!

A

A Big Move to Island Life

Oh, hi!

It has been far too long of a while since my last post. Remember when I ended by saying that I had "a busy couple of weeks coming up," and I wasn't sure when you'd next hear from me? Well, I wasn't kidding. Here's a really quick, get-up-to-speed rundown of events since Aug. 22 of 2013. 

• 8 days later :: I flew from Atlanta to Milwaukee, and finally let this wonderful guy steal my heart :) Sappy, I know, sorry...ish. Commencement of long distance relationship!
• 5 days later than that :: I flew to Grand Cayman and interviewed for a design job. 
• 4 days later :: I had the job...and then onset anxiety and stress because holy doodoo I was moving out of the country any day now.
• Two weeks passed and my best friends got married and there was a whole lot of "EVERYONE IS GROWING UP AND DISAPPEARING" running through my head.

I moved my things from Atlanta back home to Birmingham while awaiting Cayman Islands Immigration clearance (an absolute nightmare), and then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. 

"Good things come to those who wait." All I got were migraines. 

Finally, I became a resident of the Cayman Islands on Nov. 15 and started my new job 3 days later, and it's been busy! I've had a lot of visitors and then was spoiled to get to spend almost 3 months in the Caribbean with my guy :) I've probably logged at least 48 hours of snorkel time, and my freckles have multiplied (my tan, not so much -____- ).

      

I've also been taking a lot more pictures, mostly on the subject of food. Food is a big thing here, especially on Sundays.  Sundays become a weird brunch-ghost-town. Nothing is open except restaurants, and almost every restaurant on-island has a Sunday Brunch event where you eat fancy little things and drink bottomless mimosas, and then you go to bars and keep drinking to ensure hatred of yourself on Monday morning.  I can't keep up with all that.  I eat the fancy little things, usually at a table for one, and I photograph every single cup and plate. 
It started as an Instagram restaurant-journal-of-sorts, but then I needed more. I started actually READING my cookbooks. Seriously, follow along with your imagination here: hot Caribbean sun in the sky, waves crashing, toes in the sand, cookbook in hand << that dork is me (and sitting next to me is some hunky nerd tinkering with a million GoPro gadgets).
So, I'm learning how to properly roll dough and fold ingredients and pair flavors, and SOMETIMES I'm not EVEN using a recipe. I'm also around food all day at work (this is a terrible, terrible thing). Every time I think about buying something, Lemon Shortbread Cookies for instance, I decide that I'd like to learn how to bake them instead. My new motto :: BAKE, COOK, AND EAT ALL THE THINGS! or something like that.

So anyway, what do I plan to do with these new-found interests? I don't know. I know that I'm pretty dang good at taking pictures of food, and that my food is delicious, if I may toot my own horn. I'm still sketching clocks and doodads, though materials for prototyping are too expensive when you live on a speck of dirt in the ocean, and I'm still doing Frootshoots. To hopefully not sound super cheesy, you could say I'm still Designing Amanda. I'll make an effort to post more often, and we'll just have to see where that takes me! If you'd like to follow along in real-time, follow me on Instragram @amandapandamania and you can accuse me of eating too much and constantly making you hungry :)
I've got three tropical Frootshoots locked and loaded, but we'll save those for the next post. 

Stay tuned!
A

Shootin' some more froots.

Here are three more froot-shoots; strange fruits, I might add. 

Kiwano Melon

Often times referred to as blowfish fruit, this fruit is super funky and difficult to enjoy, but yummy nonetheless.  Similar to the way you eat a pomegranate - seed by messy seed, spitting out each pit - it takes a while to eat a Kiwano Melon.  You cut the fruit in half (hamburger), and then suck out some seed pods. The seeds are surrounded by a gel-capsule-of-sorts that slimes its way around your mouth until you separate it from the flimsy little seed inside.  You can either spit the seed out or swallow it.   
Native to Africa, but grown now in California, Chile, Australia and New Zealand, this fruit (to me) tasted like a combination of cucumber and banana. 
Fun fact ::  Along with the Gemsbok Cucumber, the Kiwano Melon is the only source of water during the dry season in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. 
Source :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucumis_metuliferus and my brain.

Dragonfruit

Probably Khaleesi's favorite, Dragonfruit is one of the prettiest fruits both inside and out. However, this does NOT mean it tastes good.  These fruits grow from flowers on Pitaya Cacti, and come in three common varieties :: white-fleshed, red-fleshed or yellow. These cacti grow in hot and dry areas, and cannot withstand cold temperatures. 
The flesh is often likened to kiwi because of the small, crunchy black seeds, however the taste is like a very very bland melon.  I've had this one before; didn't like the first time, thought I'd give it another shot, still didn't like it. Sorry, Khaleesi, your fruit is no good.
Fun fact :: Dragonfruit can weigh from 0.3 to 1.5 pounds; some may reach 2.25 pounds.
Source :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitaya and my brain.

Rambutan



These guys look creepy, I know, but they are delicious. The word "Rambutan" in the Malay/Indonesian language means "hairy."  You can find these fruits growing on trees in Indonesia and Malaysia and Southeast Asia.  Having only longer spines, or "hairs," rambutan are very similar in appearance and taste to lychee. 
To enjoy a rambutan, break the outer skin with your fingernail (or with a knife if your fingernails seem to frequently disappear like mine c: ) and peel away that crazy outer shell.  Imagine that you peeled all the skin off of a grape, and that the grape is white. This is what awaits you inside that weird hairy shell.  Also, there is a giant seed in the middle of that not-grape, so don't just pop it into your mouth.  
Fun fact :: A yellow variety of Rambutan grows in Costa Rica, and is often referred to as "Wild Rambutan."
Source :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambutan and my brain.

That's all folks! I've got a busy busy couple of weeks coming up, so I don't know when you'll next hear from me. c:

Thanks for reading,
A