Chocolate Pudding Fruit

Tuesday 10th July

So you thought I was joking when I told you they have a custard apple fruit that tastes of Ambrosia in a pot.

And now I'm pleased, no, I'm ecstatic to introduce you to the so-called chocolate pudding fruit, or the Black Sapote to use it's proper name.

I saw the chocolate pudding fruit on a programme on the ABC channel a few months ago. ABC is the Australian equivalent of the BBC, which is handy because they seem to buy most of their programmes from them on account of being unable to come up with ideas of their own.

Anyway, it was an actual Australian programme about tropical fruit that you might like to grow in your garden and we sat laughing at it and wondering which of these tropical delights we might feasibly cultivate on the windowledge of Ella's bedroom back in Warrington, you know, seeing as it gets the sun in the morning.

And then the bloke comes up with this little beauty and he bites into it and says "mmm - just like a chocolate pudding". And because I've tasted several custard apples I know there's a good chance he's not joking so then I spend the next four months trawling the greengrocers and specialist organic shops of Sydney in search of this delicacy, but hardly anybody has heard of it, even when I call it by it's proper name.

And we go to Queensland and no, I can't get it in Brisbane either.

But now we're in the tropics and yes, you can buy the black sapote in the specialist fruit shop behind Coles supermarket in Port Douglas, so here it is.

The only fly in the ointment here is that my beautiful fruit isn't ripe yet. It's hard as nails and as it's illegal to transport fruit across the border into New South Wales, we face an agonising few days waiting to see whether we'll be eating it, chucking it, or, heaven forbid, attempting to smuggle it back to Sydney.

Ripen, dammit, ripen.