Encounter with the Zapote Negro
and the biggest market in the world
Every three weeks my partner and I drive twenty minutes towards the East to Iztapalapa where la Central de Abastos market takes up 3.27 km^2 of land. This is the biggest wholesale market in the world, larger than the country of Monaco, and the place we do most of our grocery shopping.
The food is displayed in garage-like enclaves along the main passageway. Shoppers must jump out of the way for workers wheeling stacks of cargo on dollies. The entire edifice is raised, and bordered by a platform where large trucks back up to drop their loads. We always go to the spot where the oranges come in. From the parking lot there is a small ladder to climb between dumpsters of rotting fruit and vegetable to reach the platform’s edge.
Produce arrives here from every state in Mexico, and many other countries too. The displays are glorious, towers of pineapples, the biggest papayas ever seen. Walking along the smell is heavenly, of fresh onion rather than the deeply refrigerated variety, comparable to shallot seared in butter.
Here you can shop with the seasons, something I love and could never experience in Canada. The prices can indicate that something is out of season, or it might disappear from the aisles. The staples like tomatoes and onions will always be available but the distribution of fruit varieties seem to change each time I visit. There is incredible diversity of plant species that can be found at the market throughout the year.
On January 2 we bought two honeydew melons, a giant watermelon, two papayas, guavas, green grapes, 5 kg of grapefruits, 6 kg of oranges, and plantains. Does 1 kg tomato count?
A green fruit the size of my fist was unfamiliar. I asked the shopkeeper its name, and she introduced me to the “Zapote Negro”. They were selling it for 25 pesos a kg, $2 CAD. I bought half a kg, two fruits. My partner told the seller there was a tree in his grandfathers yard, and when they fell to the ground the kids would eat them with sugar. The fruits I was given were ready to be eaten, so soft they appeared to be putrid, just how they should be.
When I got home I did some research, with the zapotes propped up on my desk. In nahuatl they are called tlilzapotl. There is the “black” variety that I had found, but also yellow zapote and white zapote. The scientific name is Diospyros nigra from the Ebenaceae family, a tropical and warm weather family which includes the persimmon. The yellow and white zapotes belong to different families and the three zapotes are in fact not so closely related. According to a study by the UNAM the zapote negro is endemic to Mexico, and is one of the pre-hispanic fruits now forgotten; consumed and produced less with the uptake in the consumption of processed foods. Still, 16,000 tons are produced a year and subsidies to producers are offered from the gobierno de mexico. It is hard to ship the crop beyond Mexico because the fruits ripen very quickly. In places like Tlaxcala where my partner’s grandfather’s tree was, zapote negros aren’t found in the grocery store but they grow wild everywhere. The season for the fruit is November to January. And luckily, among many curative properties they are good for sore throat and insomnia which I happen to be suffering from. I open one with a knife.
I shriek out loud, the flesh is wild and unexpected. It is black and shiny, like melted dark chocolate. My young friend Saori is not as impressed. “Que asco”, she says (how disgusting). “Yes it looks like chocolate but chocolate from 2015.” It is not your typical pretty fruit. The taste is subtle sweet like caramel, as they say, but slightly earthy and chalky. The texture is impressive, creamy, the feeling of taking a spoonful of pudding, nature’s dessert. Saori does not like it, but she’s being dramatic. And prefers her kinder chocolate bar, whereas I prefer zapote negro.
Of course I’m dying to make it into a drink, and online I find that it is traditionally mixed with brandy and cream. Other sources say that they make a spirit from fermenting and distilling it. The fruit can also be served as an agua or water based juice, as a licuado or milkshake, icecream, jello, mousse, jam, or pastry filling.
With a little less than an ounce of Torres 10 Year Brandy leftover from the Milk Ponche, and two icecubes I blend down the fruit. It is thick and beautifully black, and with the brandy has a scent like passionfruit. Saori says its smells like venom, and then runs away.
I spoon the black substance into a rocks glass and pour some cream on top. The brandy works incredibly well with the zapote negro, the chalkiness is gone. Now it really tastes like caramel and also prune, and mamay which is its near relative and another native Mexican fruit. The texture is pudding like, an incredible vitamin-rich alternative to chocolate or caramel pudding. I would make it into a boozy milkshake with vanilla ice-cream but I can’t drink anymore with this cough and I go to bed.
I sleep deeply. Upon waking I’m still coughing so I take the second fruit and make a non-alcoholic agua, which promises to be thinner, refreshing, and curative.
Agua de Zapote Negro
1 zapote negro
1/2 orange, juiced
3 cups water
1/4 cup sugar (I used 2.5 oz piloncillo sugar syrup)
Add zapote, orange juice, water and sugar to blender and blend until smooth. Add to pitcher with icecubes to taste.
I love this and its exactly what I need for my sad sick state. Cutting up the zapote is like slicing fudge. Hopefully it will cure me. Its the chocolate pudding fruit.
For party time, I will try the following recipe:
Encounter with the ZN
1 cup brandy (10 Year Torres or substitute)
2 zapote negro fruits (skin and seeds removed)
1 orange, juiced
3 cups water
1/2 cup half and half cream, or coconut milk
6 oz simple syrup (demerera syrup or piloncillo syrup would be better, miso caramel or dark chocolate syrup out of this world)
Blend zapote flesh, orange juice, water, and syrup. Strain mixture with fine strainer, scratching bottom of strainer with knife to encourage passage of liquid. Add cream and brandy and stir to combine in a large pitcher. Refrigerate. Serve neat or over ice. Optional grated cacao for garnish.
When I shop at the Central de Abastos I feel more connected with the systems of agriculture, the land, the harvest, its transport,. and the market economy. There is no packaging or stickers on the produce. We compare prices and can chart there the seasons as well as the politics of food. The origins of food in the earth is not sanitized, sometimes there is dirt on a fruit, there could be discoloration, a bruise. Outside, piles of produce rot and stink in the sun, and people salvage what they can before it turns back to earth, expelling toxic fumes. 400 tons of food ends up as waste per day, 40,000 tons sold (npr).
As Wendell Berry puts it in “The Pleasures of Eating” now I can feel “the life of the body in this world”, or a connection to the cycle of the food I consume.
Out of around 250,000 edible plant species that exist only about 200 are agricultural products according to the FAO. At the Central de Abastos I could probably find many of these, and some species that are not included in the count. If I wanted I could taste a fruit I have never tasted before every month for years. I could make some milk punch.
