Oh lordy lordy hallelujah. Guava is finally here. The SoCal seasons have been a little off this year…Climate is changing…Everything seemed a little pushed back and simultaneously squished together…Bah, no matter…When it comes, it comes…And there’s almost nothing that comes harder than a guava. The scent of it on the cool, crisp salt wind in Santa Monica is unmistakable and pungent. It’s one of those fruits that’s it’s own thing…I mean, they all are technically but some have to be considered, flavorwise, among others, whereas others are unique…The guava is certainly one of those. I hope you know what I mean. Example: No one says a pineapple tastes like banana and strawberry or bubblegum whereas something more rare like a cherimoya is described thus. Get it?

Guava appears in the holy tiki trinity alongside passionfruit and pineapple. I guess pineapple would be the father (god?), passionfruit the son (Jesus!), and guava the holy spirit (?!?). If we had to take the analogy to another area, we could relate it to the tiki gods of which there are four, so it doesn’t work so great, or the elements, or which there are also four, so I guess we’ll just have to use the weird religious symbolism of an omnipotent, unforgiving deity, his son, and a ghost? Whatever that alludes to…Sorry, I grew up in a household with a few saving graces and one of them was that I had no weekly infusion of organized religion/brainwashing. Maybe I’ll do a post later on about my thoughts on god and the universe…Death…Existence…The afterlife…

At any rate, the cool thing about guava is that it’s a fruit that can be wholly utilized. In other words, no waste. Very cool. Once you exhume the tender flesh, you can put the skins and seeds to good use. There’s two methods I can think of at the moment. 1: Infusions 2: Fermentations. I’ve done it in two ways: 1: Infusion into high proof booze. 2: Making tepache. Our current sous chef puts his scraps into vinegar, so infusion, and I’me pretty sure the kitchen in the past made some sort of koji watchimacallit with the seeds, so, again, fermentation. The reason why the guava trim works so well is that it isn’t toxic like apple seeds (that I know of) or have unusable, gross parts like a pomegranate. That said, I’m sure there’s people out there who find some use with the pom scraps (I’m looking at you, Koji Kid) by constructing a piñata with them or something else comparably artsy fartsy.

We’ll put our current guava loot to use by making a syrup and an infusion because I’m a bit over tepache at the moment. Tepache is a lot of fun but too temperamental, the bottles explode too often (yes even when cold), and they make Angel real nervous like being in that nerve wracking movie, The Hurt Locker where any second a bomb could go off, except instead of cleaning up body parts you’ve got to scrub the walk in or the wine cooler.

Hmmm. Koji whatchamacallit…I wonder if the seeds would make a decent orgeat? I’ve used koji with fruit in the past…Doesn’t turn out too well…It might be worth another try though…Maybe it would take the addition of another ingredient to help it along?