stoned fruits

Yesterday I spotted a couple of stone fruits I hadn’t seen before, vying for space among the now commonplace pluots, plumcots, dinosaurs eggs, etc. The most enticing was the black velvet apricot , a smallish, black fruit that would be mistaken for an overripe (squishy) plum if it weren’t for the slight apricot-like fuzz on the skin. The sticker on it proclaims, oddly, “no sugar!” The flesh was practically liquid and the taste was a super sweet, highly concentrated plum flavor. The skin was much sweeter than plum skin, and was the more apricot-esque in taste and texture. Nevertheless, I kept thinking of it as a black velvet plum. Delicious, but perhaps not as complex (and certainly not as satisfying) as a really good black plum.

The second fruit I picked up was a so-called mango nectarine. I can only guess the mango part was a reference to the color of both the skin and the flesh, which are a light orange reminiscent of mango flesh. The taste was pretty standard nectarine, with a bitterness very characteristic of that fruit. I didn’t enjoy it very much, but I think it my have been slightly underripe.