I always thought that the Chinese grapefruit tree in my backyard is a nuisance. It will litter the apology of my garden every winter with dead leaves. Crows will caw from its branches and throw bits of bones after cleaning the scraps of meat collected from the refuse dump of the nearby market.
My dog when she was young strongly disapproved the littering by the crows and other birds and will bark at them for a long time. The fruits of the grapefruit tree were on the branches too high for me to pick and I will leave them to fall to the ground naturally. The fall will crack them open and the pink rind pith will be often too bitter to consume as a salad, even after adding sugar, chilli powder and a dash of lime.
A couple of years back, in frustration I got rid of the tree by cutting it right to the trunk. Surprisingly, it grew back from the stump magnificently in a few years. But this time, it behaves differently. The rind pith of the fruit has a pronounced reddish hue now. My wife made a great salad from the fruit recently. I think the tree has learnt to behave. I promised myself that I will not mind the dead leaves on the ground this year. I will also not shoo away the crows and other birds who love to have their breakfast on its branches.
My inquiry as to the behavioural change of the tree brought forth quite a few interesting facts culled from the internet which I am sharing with you. My Chinese grapefruit tree (batabi lebu – ‘বাতাবি লেবু’ in Bengali ) is not ordinary. It is an original citrus fruit, with the appearance of a big grapefruit, native to South and Southeast Asia. Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis, it is also known as pomelo, pummelo, pamplemousse or shaddock.
The last name came after an elusive but legendary Captain Shaddock of East India Company who traded in the West Indies. He appeared to have brought the first seeds of the fruit for the early settlers of Barbados, who tried their hand to plant orchards of shaddock. There is indeed a very interesting site where Mr. Philip Shaddock discusses the Shaddocks or Chaddocks in great detail.
Early botanists misidentified the grapefruit as a variety of shaddock, confusing it with a second hybrid growing in Jamaica. This fruit is one of the ingredients of “Forbidden Fruit”, a liqueur that also contains honey and brandy and is famously used in the Dorchester cocktail. The recipe for this cocktail has 5 ingredients as follows:
- 75oz Lime Juice
- 5oz Sugar Syrup
- 5oz Grapefruit Juice
- 5oz Dry Gin (London Dry Gin Preferred)
- 25oz Maraschino cherry liqueur
Shake all ingredients vigorously in a cocktail shaker for 10 seconds and strain into a glass or martini glass. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.
However I will continue to enjoy an occasional bowl of salad, if I do not have to peel the fruit and make it myself. But I can share this simple salad recipe with you. Just peel the fruit and remove as much of the bitter skin and white threads as possible. Separate the individual segments with your finger. Add regular salt, sugar and red chilli powder to taste. You can add chopped green chilli instead of red chilli powder or both. Finally – EAT!!!
I have renamed my simple ‘batabi lebu’ tree as ‘pomello’ which is so smooth to the tongue and sounds so romantic, it will surely count. I must position the fruit as something exotic and this name cannot be easily pummelled.