Sonja’s Homegrown Lilikoi Soufflé Pie

July 30, 2006 | In Flora, Food |

Instead of going straight to the recipe, this pie has a bit of a story. First of all, lilikoi are passion fruit, also called maracuyá or granadilla in their native South America. The Hawaiian name comes from the valley where they first went wild on Oahu. They have since invaded all islands and several varieties can be found wild in the forests all over Kaua’i:

• Yellow skin with yellow plup - the most common in Hawaii, a bit tart but still good
• Yellow skin with orangish pulp - a lucky find that is usually sweeter
• Purple skin with orangish pulp - common in South America but not on Kaua’i
• Velvety orange skin with grey pulp - has an appealing smell but a particular musty flavor (I’ve heard it called Thai lilikoi, and it looks like something called a water lemon)
• Banana Poka - The beautiful pink flower that is threatening to choke Kokee, edible but not eaten

You can just split or cut them open and eat the pulp, seeds and all. The taste is typically tart but refreshing. The ones with smooth, shiny skins get dimples as they ripen, and those are usually sweeter. The seeds are crunchy but not bitter like grape seeds. At home you can squish the juice out through a sieve if you don’t like the seeds. The juice can be diluted and sweetened to make a tropical lemonade with a characteristic perfume (also use in sangria and wine coolers).

We always used to pick lilikoi on the trails and backroads, but we don’t get out as much anymore with the baby. So we sprouted some of the seeds and planted several foot-high shoots near our fence. In the meantime, a wild plant started growing in the herb garden and quickly covered almost 30 feet (10 meters) of our hedge nearby. People will tell you that Kauai is like that, you just have a desire for something and it manifests itself for you (to find things you were not looking for, head to Sri Lanka, formerly known as the isle of Serendip).

Update: I found a website all about passion fruit, including the historical explanation of how the Spanish missionaries taught the passion of Christ based on the elements of the flower (3 nails, five wounds, and a crown of thorns), hence the name.

So we now have beautiful flowers and 4-6 lilikoi fruit every day. It’s a bit of an Easter egg hunt, looking for the smooth, egg-shaped fruit in the grass and behind the herb garden, but the kid in me really enjoys that. To find a use for the juice, my wife Sonja wanted to make a pie. We didn’t have the ingredients for a lilikoi cheesecake like you find in many restaurants, and she didn’t want just a plain pudding, so she improvised a sort of mousse by combining several recipes. It puffed up in the oven like a soufflé and then collapsed into a light golden mousse, but the result was delicious:

Finally, here is the recipe she improvised:

Sonja’s Lilikoi Soufflé Pie 1 1/2 cups pure lilikoi juice 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup sugar (turbinado, sucanat, “blond”, or brown) 2 tsp. mochiko (fine rice flour/starch, substitute corn starch) 1 Tbsp. agar cake mix (vegetarian gelatin) 1 Tbsp. butter 4 eggs 1 pie crust (we used the Arrowhead Mills organic graham cracker crust) Boil most of the juice with the water and most of the sugar. Stir in the mochiko and boil, then stir in the agar and boil once more. Let cool a little. Meanwhile, separate the eggs and mix yolks with the butter. Stir in the cooled juice. Whip the egg whites separtely and then fold into the mix. Pour into crust and bake 30+ minutes at 350°F (175°C or gas oven 4).