Papaya and Kiwi for Breakfast
current situation: breakfast
Two halves of papaya and a kiwi. It barely qualifies as a recipe and it is on this site because it is genuinely what breakfast should be about three mornings a week.
The whole thing is knowing when a papaya is ripe, which almost nobody does because they are usually sold rock hard and green. It wants to be mostly yellow-orange with a little give at the stem end, and it should smell faintly sweet. Deep coral flesh, like the picture. Pale orange means it was cut too early and it will taste of nothing.
A squeeze of lime over it is not a garnish. Papaya on its own is sweet and slightly flat, and lime is what makes it taste like fruit.
- Feeds
- 2
- Hands-on
- 5 minutes
- Cooking
- None
- Essential
- Lime
What you need
Everything
- 1 ripe papaya — mostly yellow-orange, slight give at the stem end
- 2 kiwis, peeled and sliced into rounds
- 1 lime, halved
- A pinch of flaky salt
- Black pepper, and it belongs there
How it goes
1 — Ripen it on the counter, not in the fridge
A papaya bought green will ripen in three to seven days at room temperature and will never ripen in the fridge — cold stops the process permanently. Once ripe, then it goes cold.
2 — Halve it lengthways and scoop the seeds out
A spoon run down the cavity takes the black seeds out in one pass. They are edible and peppery; most people bin them.
3 — Leave it in the skin
Cut side up, skin on, eaten with a spoon. It is the right vessel, it keeps the flesh from drying and it means no plate to wash.
4 — Peel the kiwi with a spoon, not a knife
Top and tail it, then slide a dessert spoon between skin and flesh and run it round. The skin comes off in one piece and you lose none of the fruit.
pro tip — A kiwi is ripe when it gives to gentle pressure like a ripe peach. Hard kiwi is sour and squeaks against your teeth.
5 — Fan the kiwi along one half
Rounds overlapping along the length. Both halves is too much green; one is the picture.
6 — Lime over everything, generously
Half a lime per papaya half, squeezed over right before it is eaten. This is the one thing that cannot be skipped.
7 — Salt and black pepper
A pinch of flaky salt and a grind of pepper across both. It sounds wrong on fruit and it is how papaya is eaten almost everywhere it grows.
Current situation: breakfast. Five minutes and nothing was cooked. LFG.