When you’re indulging in the fruit named after Christ’s sacrifice, you’ve really got to take it all the way, right? I think Jesus would be happy. He was a carpenter after all, a blue collar working man with magical powers at his fingertips. It all makes sense due to the fact that passionfruit itself is a bit magical. The geode of the fruit world, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to look at it in its whole form and then once you cut it open a gaze inside and it exudes that insane perfume, then and only then are we taken aback by its majesty. Yes, it can only be one thing. Many other exotic fruits remind us of staples from our childhood. The cherimoya, for example, tastes a bit like banana, pineapple, strawberry, peach, etc. The passionfruit only tastes like passionfruit. It’s an original.

Confession: For years I only dug the pits out and threw away the husks. Big no no. It was Tiff, the better half of Slow Burn, that started posting her thoughtful usage of the husks and seeds and so started me on this current path.

Yes, once you’re finished digging out the good stuff and you make your golden passionfruit syrup you can throw the husks into a vat of simple syrup and extract more of that distinct flavor. The cool thing about using the husks is they have a natural bitterness that is subtle and not dominating and they also leach out a cool purple pigment. It doesn’t take that long, Maybe an hour at a simmer.

Do it.

Ah, but once we use the husks, we can go a little further.

With the leftover scraps remaining from the husk syrup, I added a bunch of dried orange slices, a bottle of Beaujolais, and a cup of pisco. I tasted it the next day and it was delightfully bitter and sweet, so no need to add any other bittering agents. I think I’ll strain it off today when I arrive to work. I actually didn’t think this one would be so easy. I did this last year and it came out like dreck possibly because I added too many random ingredients. The passionfruit skins take care of the bitterness and flavor angle and the sugar still clinging to the skins takes care of the sweet. The dried orange peel just adds…Orangey goodness.

Organic passionfruit are usually 8$ to $10 a pound, so on the expensive side…Unless you’re able to take them all the way…The hard part is figuring out how to use it once you’ve got it.