A Is for Apple? No, Atemoya

By Mimi Sheraton.

Cherimoya. Jicama. Loquat. Malanga. Tamarillo. Ceriman. Carambola. Chayote. Mammee. Pomelo. Kiwano. Yuca. At first glance, the names seem to be the language of a mystical incantation. In fact, they could be a shopping list of produce to be purchased at the supermarket.

No longer satisfied with apples and oranges, peas and beans, a growing number of Americans are titillating their restless palates with exotic fruits and vegetables. Mostly tropical and native to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, this colorful harvest used to be found only in ethnic neighborhoods. Now many of these edibles are becoming standards, not only at high-fashion greengrocers but in the supermarkets of several major chains. "Foods that look strange now (as ginger, shallots, bean sprouts and even avocados did not so long ago) may soon be common in our culinary vocabulary," writes Elizabeth Schneider in her carefully detailed and timely new buying guide and cookbook, Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables, A Commonsense Guide (Harper & Row; $25).

That prediction is already coming true. According to Harold Seybert, owner of Fairway Fruits & Vegetables on Manhattan's West Side, such fruits as papayas, mangoes and kiwis can no longer be considered exotic. "I sell 100 cases of kiwis a week, with 33 in each case. That's 3,300 kiwis," he marvels in disbelief. "The yuppies will buy items that are different, regardless of price." Pointing to a Mexican green-skinned cherimoya ($6.50 each), which resembles a large hand grenade and tastes like a creamy apple (hence the , nickname custard apple), Seybert says, "I sell 80 lbs. a week. My head is not trained for this."

Not all new offerings meet with equal success. Among recent marketing failures at Fairway, Seybert cites the ugli, a yellow, rough-skinned fruit from Jamaica that looks like a woebegone grapefruit and tastes like a second- rate one.

Yuppies alone do not account for this vogue. Also nibbling on the botanical wild side are serious connoisseurs and health buffs, who for once agree about food. Introduced to these products either by travel or by the immigrants who first imported them, inventive chefs have placed these ingredients on their menus, thereby reaping generous helpings of publicity and attracting a thrill- seeking clientele. Always in search of something new to add to their salads, the health-minded value fruits and vegetables because they have no cholesterol and are generally low in sodium and calories and high in several nutrients. Finally, improved refrigeration and transportation make it possible to ship produce to far-off places, a consideration that will probably become less important as American farmers continue to experiment with these varieties. The appeal of these new products is not limited to New York and California, as food trends so often are. In Chicago, the current rage is jicama (pronounced hee-kahmah), a knobby, earth-colored tuber from Mexico; it looks rather like a giant water chestnut, which is just about what this crisp, icy salad vegetable tastes like. Jicama has been heavily promoted at the 87 Dominick's supermarkets, with good results. "We used to sell a case per store every other week or so," says Mario Zullo, the chain's head produce buyer. "Now we sell two to three cases per store each week. It has become a part of our everyday produce." Nor is jicama alone in beguiling Midwestern palates. Reports Jack Cerniglia, of the large Chicago wholesale firm La Preferida: "Four years ago, we ordered just 400 lbs. of different Oriental products in a week. Now we get 6,000 lbs. a week. It's gone crazy, this business."

The big I-told-you-so winner in the exotic vegetable game is Frieda Caplan, 63, the exuberant, feisty spirit behind Frieda's Finest/Produce Specialties, a Los Angeles wholesaler. Widely credited with introducing the New Zealand kiwi into the U.S. 24 years ago, she good-naturedly gloats, "When I said it was going to be a major market, people laughed at me." Indeed, Caplan has the last laugh: she now ships 150 to 200 items all over the country at any given time. Besides such novelty vegetables as sugar-snap peas, pearl onions and spaghetti squash, she stocks Asian pears from Japan, loquats from Chile and Mexican Burro bananas. Inspired by her success with the kiwi, Caplan has gone back to New Zealand for tamarillos (tart, egg-shaped tree tomatoes), pepinos (purple-striped golden melons with a silken texture and a flavor reminiscent of pears and honey) and kiwanos, which she describes as the "weirdest looking fruit." They are brilliant orange on the outside and bright green within, and have a banana-lime flavor.

As with such fashionable and freakish variations as golden beets, purple peppers, white eggplants, blue potatoes, red artichokes and doll-size vegetables, much of this exotica is more interesting to the eye than the palate. Beautiful but without much discernible flavor are the fanciful winged string beans from the Philippines, while Southeast Asia's carambola, or star fruit, has crispness as its sole virtue. The ceriman, or Monstera deliciosa, from Mexico, a long, scaly dark green fruit, is a pallid, mildly sour, near taste-alike of pineapple combined with banana. The provocatively named passion fruit, though adding a bright sophisticated flavor to sherbets and creamy desserts, is unpleasantly cloying when eaten plain. Finally, there is the soft, watery chayote, a green squashlike vegetable well known in Louisiana as the mirliton, where it attains high culinary distinction only after being baked with an herbaceous stuffing of shrimp and crab meat.

But bland flavors apparently do not discourage consumers who seem hungry to eat the words they cannot even pronounce.

With reporting by Marilyn Balamaci/Chicago and Paul A. Witteman/San Francisco