Tapioca, So Versatile?

A couple nights ago, I found myself in Harris Teeter with a couple extra bucks and the taste for custard (what a glamorous word!) in my mind. So naturally, I bought the two things that I THOUGHT were most associated with that taste: tapioca and a cherimoya.

I hadn't had tapioca pudding in years, and I never even really liked it much. Often I cook things for the novelty of cooking them, not cause I'm super enamored with the result...so this was one of those instances. Instead of finding just the tapioca pearls, I stumbled upon Kraft Minute Tapioca, which contains soy lecithin as a thickener...and the tapioca pearls are teeny-tiny. Long story short, I followed the pudding recipe on the side of the box, and seeing as I had a can of coconut milk randomly in my pantry, I halved the milk and replaced the other half with said coconut milk. Worked pretty well, and as I topped the cold pudding with some leftover chocolate mousse frosting from my dad's birthday cake, the pudding/chocolate combo was pretty much like eating a Mounds bar.

On another note, I found a site that has scans from the old Kraft Minute Tapioca cookbook dating back to 1923. Things like Tapioca Tomato Bisque and Tapioca Creamed Salmon look curious to say the least. I think I'll try making something of out this...just for the novelty...as usual.

And as for the cherimoya...it's a South American fruit (related in family to the North American Pawpaw) that is also called a "custard apple." I had never tasted one before, so I wanted to see if it lived up to its name. The selection at HT was pretty dismal, but I found one in the back that yielded a little to touch and didn't seem overripe like the rest. Suffice it to say that the cherimoya was... interesting? Maybe it was just the one that I found, but the flesh seemed to jump between tart at times to more fruity and tropical at others. Word on the street is that it's a mix of mango, pineapple, and strawberry. I say that if you need so many other tastes to describe a flavor, it's probably not a good indicator of what the taste will be (and indeed, it didn't taste anything like a strawberry in my book, and even the pineapple/mango is kind of vague...it really is just more of a tropical taste. Leave it at that!). However, the whole custard part was pretty much lost on me...the texture was more pear-like, so maybe I didn't get one ripe enough? The black seeds probably interested me the most...they contrasted so nicely with the whitish flesh. They're also surprisingly plasticky--they seem like a good candidate for making bead necklaces or something.