Odd Foods: The UGLI© Fruit
In my on-going pursuit of food oddities, particularly fruit oddities, I’m continually amazed by what’s available at your local store.
At first I thought, “well, I do live in New York City, and there’s something fitting about having access to so much”, but as time has passed and I’ve been around, I’m realizing that these kinds of things are everywhere! The bodega or deli around the corner as well as the local grocer.
The ugli fruit (pronounced oo-glee according to wikipedia), or Jamaican Tangelo, is something special: not only are fruits like this available thanks to globalization, but their names are copyrighted and they’re sold as branded items. This fruit, which at the end of it all is a hybridization between a grapefruit and a tangerine, is sold under two different brand names: UGLI© Fruit and Uniq© Fruit.
Grown largely in it’s native Jamaica, the fruit was actually discovered growing wild on the island, and has since been commercialized.
The skin is rough, but easy to peel like a naval orange, while the flesh is extremely juicy tending more towards the sweet of the tangerine, rather than the bitter of the grapefruit… which is good because I don’t like grapefruit, and I did like this.
Not as expensive as some of the exotics I’ve looked at before, it does however command a premium when compared to more mundane fruits (apples and oranges for example). It’s slightly larger than a standard grapefruit, and had a sturdy shelf life, lasting more than 2 weeks on my counter before I dug in.
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