Good morning budding home bartenders and fellow intoxicologists. Are you clueless and would like to know how to prep a cherimoya? I’ve had these weird fruits on the brain for a bit. They’re around here for a little while, maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month, and then they’ll be gone for another year.

First off, how do you know they’re ready to go? Well, give ’em a gentle squeeze. For proper ripeness fondling, think avocado. I may be the worst person in the world at judging this, so I also look at the skin. See how there’s some brown creeping in? That’s another great indicator. Fully brown is bad, however.

Find yourself a nice cutting board and a sharp knife. Cut the cherimoya in half and then in half again. That gives you quarters, dumb dumb.

Here we are. See the little brown core on the piece in the upper right hand corner? It’s gross. Cut that part off.

Now separate flesh from skin (sounds a little macabre, right, Dr. Lecter?). Use a soup spoon for best results. This is how you’ll really find out if it’s the perfect ripeness. The spoon should slide right under the skin.

Up to this point, if you’ve listened, you’ll have your perfect little glistening, scrumptious cherimoya chunks ready to go. Oh man, it’s so tasty. Trash the skins. Yes, we try to be zero waste as much as possible, but the skins are not only inedible but also toxic. You heard that right.

Yes, the skins AND the seeds are toxic. Too much and you’ll descend into madness, join a jazzercise studio, and start collecting your old toe and fingernails in a jar next to your bed. Ha. No, I think it takes a lot to get sick from them, but if you’re like me you probably don’t want to make your toilet look like a Jackson Pollack painting. Do you? Maybe you do you sick bastard.

Anyway, extracting the seeds takes a little work. You’ve got to go through with your fingers and pinch the seeds out, one by one.

Once you’re done, it looks like this. You’re left with seeds and flesh. Launch the seeds unless you want to make a poison out of them to destroy your enemies a la Breaking Bad or Hamlet, etc.

A large and small cherimoya came to 574 grams of flesh. In the past I’ve added equal parts by weight Andy’s whey (a byproduct of making ricotta cheese [I’ll do a post on it later]) and then equal parts by weight sugar. So, 1148 grams of whey and cherimoya and 1148 grams of sugar. By the whey (get it?) this gave us a quart and a pint container’s worth of syrup. For you home bartenders, that may be enough for the next five years. But you can make other things with it besides drinks.

Put this all in a VitaMix or similar blender. Puree on the lowest setting for a moment, if you missed any seeds, this will be the test. you’ll hear and see them rattling around inside the pitcher like rogue wasps. If this does happen, you’ll have to fish the seed(s) out. Once you know your syrup is pure, puree on high for a couple of minutes to combine everything and melt/whirl all the sugar. A simple pass through a chinois strainer into an appropriate receptacle (in my case a four quart measuring container) will filter out any unnecessary chaff, but with this there’s usually not much.

Now that you’ve got your syrup, what the hell do you do with it? Well, make a yourself a goddam drink, dummy. Rum anyone?

Pictured here we’ve got an oldie but a goodie. We called it, The Cherimoya Sour. Real original but suitable. A decent pot still cachaça will add some nice funk to the deal but if it’s not readily available you can go all white rum.

Cherimoya Sour

1 oz. White Cachaça

1 oz. White Rum

3/4 oz. Cherimoya/Whey Syrup

1/2 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

1/2 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

4 Drops Saline Solution (1:10 ratio, salt to water)

Shake, double strain into a small coupe, quaff.