Archive for the ‘exotic fruits of El Salvador’ Tag

Strange Fruit: Spikey and Red, the Mamon Japones   1 comment

Mamon Japones - Rambutan

There are words you learn in a second language you literally do not know the name for in your own because you never encountered that “thing” in your mother tongue.

I thought it was a lychee, but apparently its a close relative called a Rambutan.

Mamon ( Mamones – plural ) is the Salvadoran word for a tropical fruit I never ate or remember seeing back home.   The ones I’m eating now are golfball size, and I’ve never seen them any bigger than that.  Lisa Dang’s post shows Rambutan’s a lot bigger, though.

The skin of this exotic fruit comes off by breaking it with your finger or using a knife if its stubborn. I think they are not quite ripe if the skin is tough; the flavor is more sour on those whose skin breaks easier.  The flesh is a white cream color, and it tastes both sweet and sour.   This pic from last year in October shows them at 5  cents a piece, and yesterday I got 20 in the market downtown for 50 cents, a full year later.

Prices of fruits and vegetables vary in the market, as well as for maize and beans, depending on if they are in/out of season and how well the crop turned out, so they can down just as soon as up. Funny thing, I’ve never seen a Supermarket drop the prices of fruits or grains.  Hmmm….

Courtesty of Wikipedia - click for page / link

Another Mamon fruit worth mentioning is the Mamon Verde (Mamones verdes) .  In El Salvador, the word Mamon is used for two different fruits – the Mamon Japones [Japonese style Rambutin] depicted above, and here on the left, which is the Mamon verde (green) [ known to us as a  Spanish lime, or mamoncillo].


This Mamon has a smooth shiny green skin, and its flesh is a peachy color instead of whitish with the red spiky one.  The green Mamon is quite sour and makes you pucker up.   I have been walking in the country with people and we picked and ate them, but was never lucky enough to pick the spiky cousin in the wild before.

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