Chikoo is a unique tropical fruit, native to only a handful of countries. It’s also known as Sapodilla in English, Zapote in Spanish, or Naseberry in the West Indies. In India, people have a very black-and-white relationship with the fruit; they either love it, or absolutely hate it, there is simply no middle ground. For those of us who love it, the memory of slurping a thick chikoo shake or rushing to the nearest ice cream parlour for the seasonal flavour offering is quite acute.

So what does it even taste like? It’s a fleshy fruit, that at its ripest is soft, and has the consistency of a ready-to-eat pear. It has 2 - 3 large, slender black seeds that are easy to remove, and personally I prefer to eat it sans skin - scooped out like a kiwi. It’s a little granular on the tongue and the closest I can get to describing its taste to the uninitiated would be to think of it as an oversweet custard, with strong notes of vanilla and pear in it.

That being said, a quick Google search will show you that not too much has been done with this fruit, and I chalk that down to its availability in countries where use of offbeat ingredients in dining and/or patisserie has not evolved as much as it has in either Europe or North America. So I thought, why not try and change that?

ingredients

Notes:

*Be as precise as possible with the ingredient measures, for the best results. I highly recommend using a kitchen scale for the exact measurements in grams.

*The mousse yield is more than required for this recipe. Excess can be refrigerated for up to 5 days and can totally be devoured as a dessert by itself!

GROUP A: CHIKOO MOUSSE

• 85g vanilla oat milk (substitute: whole milk + 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)

• 52g heavy cream

• 32g granulated sugar

• 1/8 tsp salt

• 8g cornstarch

• 1 egg white

• 7g salted butter

• 42g very cold heavy cream

• 1 tsp kahlua

• 3 fresh, ripe chikoos

GROUP B: EVERYTHING ELSE

• 2 - 3 tbsp honey granola

• 1/4 cup whole salted pretzels

• 1 tsp freshly grated orange zest

• 1 dehydrated orange wheel (recipe here)

method

• Make the chikoo mousse (can be made up to 2 days in advance): Whisk the salt, cornstarch, and sugar in a medium bowl. Add the vanilla (if using), kahlua, and egg white. Whisk well again. Peel and de-seed the chikoos and slice into thin slivers.

• Add the milk, 52 grams of heavy cream, and chikoo slivers to a saucepan and simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Then, increase the heat to medium-low and continue to simmer till little bubbles form on the surface. At this point, pour a bit of this mixture into the egg white mix and whisk that continuously to prevent any curdling. Pour this new mix back into the saucepan, and keep whisking for another minute.

• Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into another bowl. Whisk in the butter till completely dissolved. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap in such a way that the wrap sticks to the surface of the custard mixture. Refrigerate to cool for at least 2 hours. After cooling time is up, whip the remaining 42 grams of heavy cream to moderately stiff peaks (the peaks don’t have to have a very defined pointy shape, but the mixture should not fall out of the bowl when turned upside-down). Fold this whipped cream into the cooled custard base. Transfer to a squeezy bottle or piping bag fitted with a tip, till it’s time to assemble your dessert (or simply scoop with a spoon).

• Assemble the jar: Lightly blitz the pretzels and granola together in a blender or food processor till it forms a sweet and salty uniform mixture. Add to a serving jar of choice. Scoop in as much mousse as you’d like, then sprinkle the orange zest all over. Garnish with a dehydrated orange wheel prior to serving.

Please the Seul: Scoop vertically while eating to get the sweet & salty crunch, silky mousse, and bittersweet citrus zest all in one flavour-explosive bite!

Recipe for the mousse adapted from Ruth Tam’s Vanilla Bean Mousse.