FOOD

Pawpaw: America's forgotten fruit

Jere Downs
@JereDowns

As Jim Busch lay dying of malignant melanoma last April, he called friends to his bed from the St. Peter Claver public garden in Smoketown. The pawpaw trees were blooming, he told Milana Boz. He was anxious. Would they pollinate the trees by hand?

From his home in Germantown, Ky., Busch taught Boz and her 6-year-old daughter Ella how to trim bristles on tiny paintbrushes to a blunt tip. The next day, they took a friend to Smoketown and strained to reach every blossom they could. First they used those brushes to gently collect pollen from the insides of a pawpaw blossom on one tree. Next, they delicately transferred the pollen to a flower on a different pawpaw tree. That labor of love took most of a Sunday to pollinate an estimated 1,000 musky purple blooms.

"That was one of the very last things he did," Boz said of the six trees pollinated that day in the pawpaw grove across Lampton Street from the new Shepphard Square housing complex. "He was our best and dearest friend."

The following Saturday, Busch died at age 60. But his pawpaws live on.

The oblong green fruit from the three varieties Busch cultivated in Smoketown each won blue ribbons last month at the Kentucky State Fair, a winning streak begun in 2011 when his trees first began bearing fruit.

Recipe | KSU pawpaw ice cream

Pawpaw harvesting in Smoketown continues this month for an expected yield of 600 to 700 pounds. That bounty is finding its way into pawpaw flan, habanero pawpaw preserves and pawpaw ice cream at Seviche Restaurant.

"It is America's tropical fruit. It reminds me of a cross between a mango and a banana," Lamas said. "I preserve about 360 pounds every year."

Last month, ripe pawpaws from Smoketown also landed in consumers' baskets at the bi-weekly New Roots Fresh Stop local produce pickup at nearby Coke Memorial United Methodist Church on Breckenridge Street. Proceeds from Busch's pawpaw plantation established in 2006 have raised $2,000 to date to benefit the garden, said Kathleen O'Neal, executive planner for the Louisville Metro Housing Authority.

"These fruits are his legacy," O'Neal said.

And they are a growing fetish food for fans of what many call "America's forgotten fruit." Three dozen pawpaw enthusiasts showed up last month for a seminar in the shade of Busch's pawpaw grove at the St. Peter Claver garden to learn how to cultivate, harvest and cook the pawpaw. They tasted pawpaw jam on crackers and savored pawpaw ice cream while wondering aloud about what to do with its mushy, sweet pulp.

"Pawpaw has a lore as a mysterious fruit," said artisan baker Sarah Owens, who took a few pounds of pawpaw home to produce a recipe for Pawpaw, pineapple & coconut bread. A horticulturist and author of "Sourdough, Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories and More,"  Owens seeks out seasonal produce for her baking.

"I grew up in Tennessee and if we got a hold of one it was a magical thing because the raccoons or possums would usually get to them first," she said.

Recipe | Pawpaw pineapple coconut bread

Said to be Thomas Jefferson's favorite fruit, the pawpaw also sustained the Lewis & Clark expedition for three days when no other food could be found during their trek home from the western territories in 1805, said Sheri Crabtree, a pawpaw specialist at Kentucky State University. KSU, she added, is home to the world's largest pawpaw research plantation of 30 cultivars.

Cultivated pawpaw is milder and sweeter than its more bitter wild cousins found in pawpaw patches from Florida to eastern Ontario. Pollinated by flies and beetles instead of bees, purple pawpaw blossoms ripen into heavy, mango-sized fruits in August and September. That fruit turns mushy within days of ripening. The short shelf life is the reason pawpaws have not been suited for commercial shipping and widespread availability, Crabtree added.

But if you can get your hands on some pawpaw, you can keep it fresher for a few days by storing it in the refrigerator. Peel the fruit's thick green hide with a potato peeler and puree its yellow fruit. Use immediately in cooking or freeze the pulp for later use.

Last month KSU visited the Smoketown garden to give a workshop on pawpaw, drawing three dozen people — twice that of last year. The KSU Atwood pawpaw tastes of banana, Owens said. The Pennsylvania Golden had a watery flesh with notes of vanilla and citrus and is prized as a reliable early producer.

Describing their taste can be difficult, Crabtree said.

"A pawpaw tastes like a pawpaw," she said. "Just like a peach tastes like a peach."

Recipe | Bob Lynch's pawpaw jam

With the only full-time pawpaw research program in the world, KSU fields inquiries about pawpaw from as far as Europe and Asia, where the fruit is growing in popularity, she added.

When ripe, pawpaws drop into your hand from the tree with a gentle tug. As the workshop drew to a close, garden manager Amanda Fuller began to comb the ground beneath the pawpaw trees, which had been steadily dropping their heavy fruit, each with a light thud. Helping gather that bounty was O'Neal and Boz. And as they picked up pawpaw or tugged fruit from in between glossy, dark green leaves, the talk turned back to Busch.

"These were his babies. I am absolutely sure he is here and watching us," Boz said. "We just want to keep this tradition going."

Jere Downs can be reached at (502) 582-4669, Jere Downs on Facebook or at JDowns@Courier-Journal.com

Pawpaw & Sorghum Workshop

How to grow and cook pawpaw and grow sorghum and press its syrup will be covered in a free, workshop Sept. 17 at Kentucky State University from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at 1525 Mills Lane in Frankfort. Lunch is included and no pre-registration is required.  For more information, call Sheri Crabtree at (502) 597-6375 or email Sheri.Crabtree@kysu.edu