Sitaphal is popular, but don’t write off ramphal and hanumanphal

My brothers and I loved playing with food as kids. Grown-ups invariably warned us against squeezing orange peels into each other’s eyes, pasting the sticky ends of ladyfingers on faces  around or eating fryums off our fingers.

It was almost a law of physics: the potential of having fun with food, before it's ingested, was inversely proportional to the presence of adults in a 10-feet radius. This is why it never ceased to amaze me that the adults too had no space for manners when devouring the cragged-y sitaphal. Each of us was handed the fruit along with a saucer to collect the seeds in. We’d take apart the ripened fruit, bend our respective heads and mouth off little chunks of the soft, white flesh, spitting out way more seeds than the sweet stuff. My brothers and I would spit out seeds into each other’s saucers – a ruse to ask for more fruit, by showing how little we actually got the first time, as evidenced by the few seeds in our saucers! At times we actually got away with more than our share. 

I suspect this wouldn’t have been the case if hanumanphal had made its debut then. “Hanumanphal is a recent agricultural innovation,” says food writer Vikram Doctor, the man behind The Real Food Podcast. “It’s a cross between two fruits - annona squamosa (sitaphal) and the annona chiremola (cherimoya), developed in Miami, USA a few decades ago. It has started to spread in India only in the last 10 years or so.” Fruit-seller Sagar Dongre concurs. “We’ve been stocking hanumanphal for the last 7-8 years. It’s seasonal and arrives around the same time as sitaphal,” he says. “Unlike sitaphal, which customers eagerly wait for, hanumanphal has few takers… just two of 10 people buy it,” says Dongre, who sells fruit at central Mumbai’s Matunga fruit market.

Big, hearty family

The Annona family that sitaphal and the hybrid hanumanphal (atemoya) belong to is a plant native to tropical America and the Caribbean. “It found its way to Asia, thanks to Spanish and Portugese traders,” says Michelin-starred Chef Atul Kochhar, adding the family also includes bull’s heart fruit (ramphal), soursop (lakshmanphal) as well as cherimoya and ilama, the last two are unavailable in India.  

The first three are conspicuous by their bumpy skin. The white insides of sitaphal and ramphal are segmented, with a buttery-smooth sweet pulp and a delightful aroma. “Sitaphal is rounder and the brown or yellowish Ramphal has red highlights and tends to be heart-shaped, hence the ‘bull’s heart’ moniker,” explains Kochhar, admittedly partial to sitaphal. And he isn't the only one. Dongre says that a majority of his customers come looking for it in the run-up to Diwali and pay upto `300 a kilo. “Maharashtra is a leading producer of sitaphal, growing 18 varieties, due to the high demand,” he adds.

By contrast, ramphal (annona reticulata) doesn’t attract the same kind of following because “it’s an acquired taste” says Chef Jaydeep Mukherjee of deGustibas Hospitality, who once used it for a roasted lamb recipe at Indigo.

While Mukherjee hasn’t turned to the fruit in a long time, Kochhar’s LIMA tapas bar in Mumbai, uses ramphal for a Soursop Salad, usually from April to June. 

Completing the holy assembly is lakshmanphal (annona muricata), which another Mumbai fruit-seller Anil Singh, says has cancer-curing properties. Shrugging at the urban legend, Vikram Doctor says, “It's a significantly expensive fruit because of its reputation for cancer curing benefits, but I wouldn't pay that kind of a price for it”.

Throwing its weight around 

Instead, Doctor would prefer to put his money on hanumanphal that’s “delicious, tastes almost the same as sitaphal, and has fewer seeds”. With a light green, leathery skin, hanumanphal is bigger and heavier than sitaphal. It’s also more fleshy adds, Binod Thakur, who’s been selling fruits in suburban Mumbai for two decades. But warns that unless eaten on the day it ripens or the next, “keede pad jaate hai (it attracts insects).”