Smoothie Jazz

A crack team of smoothieologists create some satisfying and original blended beverages

by James Saul

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Published: May 29, 2007

Ah, the fruit stands of Chinatown: They're Carmen-Miranda's-headpiece-esque meccas for anyone on a quest for exotic produce. But what would happen if someone were bold enough to snatch up a bunch of weird fruit and attempt to turn them into refreshing smoothies? I assembled a crack team of smoothieologists in the hopes of creating some truly satisfying — and truly original — blended beverages.

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We set our sights to the East (of Broad) and assembled a cache of random fruit, from the relatively normal (mango, passion fruit) to the rather unusual (Korean melon, lychee, guava). Our smoothie base: a vegan combination of soft silken tofu, soy milk and the occasional dollop of blue agave extract to sweeten things up.

First up: guava, mango and passion fruit, the latter of which resembles a li'l brain when cracked opened. We soon discovered, however, that it had way too many seeds to blend without incident. As a result, this smoothie ended up looking like liquefied dill havarti cheese. Tasted OK, if not a little bland.

Far more terrifying was our papaya and passion fruit experiment, which looked like mucus and tasted bitter and awful. If you like papaya, there's a small chance this could be agreeable, but even that's pushing your luck. After tossing in some banana and agave, however, it actually became quite tasty — mainly because it drowned out the papaya flavor.

Our lychee and mango blend was a close runner-up to the aforementioned banana-enhanced concoction. The mango, while adding a wonderful texture to the mix, gave off a slightly bitter aftertaste. Thankfully, this smoothie's balanced color and strong, sweet hints of lychee (a tart, fleshy grapelike fruit native to China) canceled it out.

Then, the clouds parted: Lord have mercy, coconut, lychee and banana might be true smoothie perfection. With just coconut and lychee, we were stuck with watery gruel. But sneak in banana, our celebrity fruit ringer? BOOM! We tried adding Korean melon, which looks like a baby pumpkin with jaundice. No dice: It overpowered the other fruit and made the smoothie taste like liquid honeydew.

Finally, we tapped our inner mud-pie-eating first-grader and decided to create a smoothie using every single ingredient at our disposal. The end result was a bit crunchy (too many seeds), but not nearly as a bad as we initially expected.

I can now tell you from experience: If you're looking to whip up an exotic refresher, you're golden combining pretty much anything with lychee and/or coconut. Their tropical-yet-accessible flavors are sure things — no ringers necessary.

(j_saul@citypaper.net)

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