Pomegranate

One rainy morning last month I shared a taxi with a man and his two young sons. Sure, I felt uncomfortable but the whole situation took a strange turn when he said “it rains a lot here in autumn”. Sitting in the air conditioned taxi sweating, it certainly still felt like the height of summer. I stared out the window at billowing raincoats whizzing by, people with pant legs rolled up wading through puddles in plastic sandals and wished it really was autumn. Now, weeks later the heat has abated somewhat, but the humidity remains unpleasantly high, the only real indication of the changing of the seasons is visible at the market. Persimmons, peaches, melons and pomegranates have, for the most part, replaced rambutans and longans.

Perfect timing, as well, if only the weather would follow suit. See Rosh Hashanah was last week (my favourite Jewish holiday) where we eat apples dipped in honey and honey cake for a sweet new year. Pomegranates also feature as we wish that our good deeds for the year will be as plentiful as the fruits many seeds.

Recently I’ve been giving in to the cheap thrill of substandard pomegranates available here. Small soft fruit area a disappointment of pale pink sour arils that are mostly seed. But this weekend I was once again lured by their shiny promise and two large heavy fruits made it home with me. Mum assures me that it’s possible to whack them with a bat and the arils will just fall out, but I peeled these the old fashioned way. I sat in front of the wonderfully heartbreaking film The Road and separated every piece of pith from the beautiful arils, a bowl of sunshine in front of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Pomegranate arils should be fresh and sharp, but instead of being sunny these taste of a dreary winter Sunday afternoon (the worst kind, where you’re counting down the minutes until your return to a dreaded job), these taste of The Road.

If they were perfect I’d pair them with goats cheese and cress, or scatter them over stewed chicken with cinnamon and walnuts or just eat them as is. But these have large unpleasant seeds and an insubstantial flavour and I have no idea what to do with them.

Friends, I need your help: what would you turn a bucket load of average pomegranate into?