Yes, you can eat the Indiana Banana. The funky, oblong-shaped fruit will ripen this fall on a wild, native Indiana tree known as the pawpaw.
And if you hit it just right, you’ll taste a nuanced tropical flavor.
Hoosiers can’t claim exclusive rights, though. Word has it that folks also call it the Michigan Banana and Kentucky Banana.
And if you’ve never tasted it, or even noticed it, you’re like most of us.
But, for many years, Val Rossman has turned the fruit into wine, cheesecake and ice cream. She’s a forager and crafty cook in Union City, Michigan, who often tempts and fascinates her Facebook friends with dishes that she concocts from wild plants, sometimes embellished with her own fresh-caught fish and garden produce.
She shared some of her insights on what pawpaw tastes like and how to cook it.
Also of note, Purdue University researchers explored the peculiar fruit for its cancer fighting properties in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a 2019 story in the Purdue Exponent. But the potential medicine never made it to market, partly because it couldn’t be dissolved in water, which made it hard to make a pill or infusion, the student newspaper reported.
Still, compounds from pawpaw were extracted to make lice-killing shampoo and other herbal remedies, the story reported.
What does a pawpaw taste like?
Banana, mango, pear, smoke and caramel are some of the ways people have described it when Rossman has shared a bit of pawpaw to eat.
“If you get a really good ripe one, you definitely get caramel notes,” she says, including in the wine she makes from the fruit.
“They’re like any fruit,” she adds. “Sometimes you get a good one and sometimes you get a bad one. And the flavor profile can be all over the place, especially if you are not eating the selected named varieties if you’re eating wild pawpaws. Best advice is: If you’ve tried pawpaw and didn’t like it, you should try it again. I don’t like every one I bite into, and some are especially good.”
When are pawpaws ripe?
Rossman observes that pawpaws tend to ripen in our region somewhere from late September through the first couple of weeks of October, depending on location.
“We’ve had a good hot summer,” Rossman says, speculating, “things might be a little early.”
But do remember if you’re doing some outdoor exploration: It’s forbidden to pick any fruit or flowers in any nature preserve.
Where are pawpaws found?
Pawpaw trees tend to grow in low woods and along rivers and streams in the Midwest, according to Purdue Extension. They’re mainly found in the understory — that is, among the smaller trees that grow beneath the main canopy of taller trees. They can form small colonies through little “suckers” that spring off of their own tree roots.
Want one in your yard? Purdue says they don’t transplant well. Seedlings are a good way to start, but they need shade for the first couple of years. Fruit comes after about five to seven years.
How do you cook pawpaws?
One thing to be cautious of, Rossman says, is that many people’s stomachs don’t tolerate pawpaws well.
“I usually tell folks, when they first get pawpaw, to go easy on it and make sure their system is going to handle on it. And never ever eat green pawpaw. Picking them green is just bad. They won’t ripen on the counter like bananas.”
There’s just a short window for when they’re good to eat, which may be one reason why they’re not sold commercially. But the pulp does freeze well.
She tried substituting pawpaw in a banana bread recipe and didn’t like it, noting that the fruit just made it too heavy.
Rossman suggests sticking with low-heat recipes. Also, she tends to reduce the amount of pawpaw fruit she uses in a recipe “because it can get really overwhelming fast.”
“I want the tropical nuances of it without the overwhelming taste, which can put some people off,” she says.
One of her favorite recipes is pawpaw ice cream, for which she got “rave reviews” when she made it for about 250 people at a foragers gathering. The recipe comes from the book, “Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit,” by Andrew Moore (Chelsea Green Publishing), which she highly recommends.
Another of her favorites is pawpaw custard pie from Kentucky State University, which has a pawpaw research program.
Her pawpaw cheesecake has won prizes at both the Great Lakes Foragers Gathering and at the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival. She’d adapted a recipe from wild chef Alan Bergo (https://foragerchef.com/paw-paw-cheesecake/). She swapped in and embellished it with wild, foraged ingredients that most of us won’t be able to get.
Pawpaw ice cream
2 cups pawpaw pulp
1 cup sugar
2 cups cream
2 cups milk
Combine the pawpaw and sugar. Stir in the cream and milk. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.
Pawpaw Custard Pie
1 cup 2% milk
1 cup cream
3 eggs
¾ cup sugar
1 cup pureed pawpaw pulp
Mixing the ingredients as you add them, beat together the milk, cream, eggs, sugar and pawpaw. Pour the custard into a pie shell and bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 325 degrees and bake an additional 40 minutes or until you can insert a knife near the center of the pie and it comes out clean.
Paw Paw Cheesecake
Filling:
2 cups pawpaw puree
1 pound high-quality cream cheese
¾ cup sugar
Zest of half of a Meyer lemon and 2 tablespoons juice or fresh lemon juice
2 large eggs and 3 yolks at room temperature
Black Walnut-Graham Crust:
Half teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
¼ cup sugar
1½ cups graham crumbs (roughly 12 crackers)
Half cup finely chopped black walnuts or regular walnuts
Half teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
Making the crust:
Preheat the oven to 350, then melt the butter and mix with the graham crumbs, cinnamon, salt and the ground walnuts. Press the mixture into an 8-inch spring form pan or square baking dish. Bake for 12-13 minutes or until lightly browned.
Making the filling:
Cool the crust while you prepare the filling. For the filling, beat the eggs, yolks and sugar with a whisk in a stand mixer until light and doubled in volume. Meanwhile, puree the cream cheese and the pawpaw puree in a food processor until smooth. Add the pawpaw cheese mixture to the whipped eggs and continue mixing with the whisk attachment for 15 minutes, then fold in the lemon juice and zest and pour into the cooled crust.
Cooking:
Put a large pan filled with hot water on the bottom tray of the oven, and put the cheesecake on the middle rack, uncovered. Bake at 300 F for 70-80 minutes, making sure to check on it regularly at the end. The cheesecake needs to be appear slightly under-baked, and should jiggle gently in the middle. Turn off the oven and allow the cheesecake to continue cooking uncovered until room temperature. Then remove and refrigerate until needed, uncovered. The cheesecake can be frozen, then thawed later. You can also bake this as individual cheesecakes in ramekins.
Fishing and exploring around South Bend
∎ Dunes Outdoor Adventure Festival: The annual Outdoor Adventure Festival brings more than 50 free activities to the Indiana Dunes area from Sept. 5 through 21. They include hiking, biking, photography, yoga, birding, geocaching, forest bathing, paddling and more. Full schedule is at www.dunesoutdoorfestival.com. Among them, Indiana Dunes State Park will host historical re-enactors as a camp of fur traders on the beach from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT Sept. 6 and from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. CT Sept. 7. A naturalist will lead a hike to meet the fur traders at 10 a.m. CT both days.
∎ Fishing derby: Potawatomi Wildlife Park near Bourbon will host a pancake breakfast and its annual fishing derby for all ages on Sept. 6. The breakfast is from 7 to 9 a.m. for a free-will donation. Registration for the fishing derby is free. Sign up from 7:30 to 11 a.m. Fishing goes from 8 a.m. to noon, with awards at 12:15 p.m. Free hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and drinks will be offered. Bring your own fishing pole and bait or contact the park if any of those are a barrier. The park is at 16998 Indiana 331, a half mile south of Indiana 10.
∎ Orienteering meet: Use your map reading and decision-making skills in a race to navigate St. Patrick’s County Park in South Bend and find checkpoints from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 20. Cost is $8 per person. All experience levels are welcome. Register at 574-277-4828.
∎ Intro to orienteering for kids: Ages 7-12 can learn the basics of orienteering in a free program from noon to 3 p.m. Sept. 28 at St. Patrick’s County Park. Register by Sept. 24 at 574-654-3155.
Find outdoor columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@gannett.com.
Dining and Cooking