This farm is full of highland guava trees.    The insects know about their little round fruits, but until this week, I really did not.  They grow at this elevation like weeds.    The bark is quite pretty but otherwise not much to recommend the tree.  The smell of the fruit is intoxicating and you can not miss that, but the flavor, at least off the tree, is a disappointment........ and then there are the worms.

This week, I learned how to capture the aroma of the skin in a delicious jelly and how to use the dense pulp to make a butter or paste.  The jelly is more delicious than strawberry jam it has a strawberry, pineapple almost rhubarb quality that captures the aroma you pick up when you walk past a tree with ripe fruit on the farm.  The aroma that drives the insects crazy.

The paste is the caramelized pulp and is better than fig paste with cheese.  Guavas have a fig quality to them.  Could think of them as poor mans figs.  Lots of little seeds, it just takes some coaxing to make them soft and get the caramel flavor out of them.    I am completely captivated by this little fruit.   Completely understand why this fruit is a fly and worm magnet. 

The other surprise is that not all mountain guava are the same.  They  all look the same initially and taste the same but actually there are white, pink and orange versions  of the fruit.  When you cook with them these different colors give you a palate to work with that adds to the fun of the process.  I will be making this stuff  until September when the season finishes.   This is a quintessential flavor of Boquete.   

Here are some pictures of the fruits.  The smell throughout was quite incredible and the end result very pleasing.   I was using white and yellow guava and so my finished result is somewhat orangey.  Next time, I am going to try the white mixed with pink,  that should be a very pretty color, I like pink!