ご近所から、一房のムベの実をいただきました。タイガの散歩でよく通る道にある家で、広い敷地と駐車場があり、ムベを数メートルにわたって塀に絡ませてあります。これまで一度も味わったことのないムベの実なので、興味津々。
A neighbour of mine stopped me and gave me a bunch of Mube (Stauntonia hexaphylla) fruits when I passed his house this afternoon. His garden and car park are spacious enough to grow the Mube vine, stretching over several meters of fence. Mube looks similar to Akebi on the outside, but the skin does not open like Akebi, when the fruit is fully ripe. Moreover, the flesh of Akebi is almost non-existent and there is hardly any taste to it, whereas Mube has more flesh, and the jelly-like flesh is said to be very sweet.
I plucked the largest fruit which weighed only 121g. Perhaps it is lighter than it appears due to loss of moisture in the thick skin, with the normal harvest time of October long gone.
外皮を切ってみました。収穫期を大幅に過ぎているからか、皮は薄く非常に柔らかいです。
I took out my brix meter. When I applied it to the middle of the fruit, it indicated 30.4%, which I found unbelievably high.
今度は実の先端部に当てると20.7度。
The inside of the fruit looks like this.
最後に、実の中身の糖度は15.3度でした。実際に食べるときは実の外側も内側も全部一緒に味わうことになるので、18度くらいの甘さの印象。とにかく種を飲み込まないようにしながらゼリー部分を味わおうとするので、心理的に糖度どころの問題ではありませんでしたが、味はメロンのような甘酸っぱい美味しさでした。
Finally, the inside of the fruit measured 15.3%. When you eat the flesh, all the different parts of the fruit are mixed in the mouth. As a result, it tasted like 18% on the whole. Rather than how sweet it was, I was more concerned with not swallowing the stones.
I grew up in a mountainous area and knew the taste of Akebi, but this Mube was wat sweeter, and it tasted like a green melon.