The strangest things sometimes happen when you are traveling. This morning I found myself giving lessons to a Norwegian man on how to eat passionfruit!

I had ducked into one of the lounges at Jakarta airport for a quick coffee and to download my emails before my flight, when I spotted some very large passionfruit near the coffee machine. They were almost as large as oranges and more of an orange colour than the usual yellow passionfruit that you find in the tropics (the purple variety is usually grown in sub-tropical climates).


I was eating one whilst I was downloading my mails, when a Norwegian man sitting nearby asked me what I was eating. It turned out that he had never seen or eaten a passionfruit. Of course they won't grow in cool climates like Norway, so I guess he hadn't traveled in the tropics or sub-tropics very much.

I showed him how to cut the fruit open (just slice it in half) and then scoop out the pulp with a teaspoon.


He asked how to take out the seeds, but I explained you just swallow them (not crunch them because they are quite hard) with the pulp – which he didn't seem very comfortable doing. I had to assure him that they would just “slide through the system” with no after effects at all.

Unfortunately the passionfruit he sampled turned out to be a little sour and rather bland in flavour. I tried to assure him that there were many varieties of passionfruit available, and some of them had a very tasty and fruity flavour with a nice tang that was both sweet and slightly tart at the same time. But he didn't seem impressed, so I don't think I converted him to being a passionfruit eater.