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Mango tango. Gabrielle Berryer and Ann pick gorgeous mangoes at the peak of ripeness. |
Going Beyond Vanilla
As an ice cream apprentice, Ann gets a fruitful start. It's yummy work!
“You’ll never go back to plain old vanilla again,” predicts tropical fruit farmer Gabrielle “Gaby” Berryer. One taste of the Mango Passion Melange ice cream we’ve just made, and I heartily agree. Creamy-smooth with intense fresh-fruit flavor, it’s heavenly!
The secret ingredient in Gaby’s Farm specialty ice cream is TLC. Gaby has her hand in the entire process, from growing the fruits at her small grove near Homestead, FL, to making each delicious recipe herself.
She’s invited me to pitch in for a mouth-watering day...
8 a.m.» Tucked away in the rural Redland area, Gaby’s farm is just 3 acres, lush with fruit trees and passion fruit vines. Her home—a “tree house” built aboveground on steel girders—is in the middle of the grove. She produces 1,200 gallons of frozen desserts a week in a small outbuilding, with one full-time helper.
“I pick the fruit at the peak of its ripeness, process and freeze it so I can make ice cream year-round,” explains Gaby. It’s carried by Whole Foods stores in the state and featured at several fine restaurants.
A native of Haiti, Gaby has spent most of her life in the U.S. She worked as a psychologist for many years before “retiring” to this new career 7 years ago.
We head out on her utilitarian golf cart to pick up passion fruit. The vines are planted in large pots spaced 6 feet apart under a trellis that holds the lush foliage.
“When passion fruit is ripe, it falls off the vines,” Gaby explains. We gather glossy yellow, oval fruit that litters black plastic covering the ground. She grows a red-skinned variety, too. I feel like I’m on an Easter egg hunt!
“Other than Hawaii, this is the only U.S. area far enough south for passion fruit to grow,” Gaby says. “I gather it twice a day, sometimes three times.”
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Ann learns to hand-pollinate passion fruit, scraping off pollen with a straw. |
No Buzz
9 a.m.» Although the climate is right, Florida has no carpenter bees, which are passion fruit’s natural pollinator.
“So I have to hand-pollinate, which is tedious,” Gaby adds. She teaches me how to scrape pollen from anthers of the pretty purple blossoms. I catch the fine yellow “dust” in a cup, and then carefully transfer it onto the stigma of a flower from another vine. All this for the precious juice that goes into Gaby’s products!
9:45 a.m.» Taking a quick break, we mix up a pitcher of passion fruit juice in her kitchen. I savor each refreshing sip like it’s liquid gold.
10 a.m.» Back out we go for mangoes. “Color, size and feel tell you when they are ready to pick,” Gaby coaches. I look for large mangoes (many weigh more than a pound) with skin that has turned from green to peachy purple.
Each mango hangs from its own strong stem. Gaby uses her thumbnail to snap one off, and I follow suit. The ripe mango feels smooth and slightly soft. It has an appealing fragrance.
“I made my first batch of mango ice cream while I still lived in town, where I had two trees in the yard,” Gaby recalls. “When I was a child, our family often made homemade ice cream—I’ve always loved it.”
Encouraged by family and friends, she moved to the farm and got a grant to get the ice cream business started. “One of my daughters (Gaby has three grown children) helped me give out samples at festivals. People loved it.” Soon stores and restaurants began to feature her gourmet products.
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| Mystery fruit! No, this odd fruit is not a giant pear or a melon—it’s exotic jakfruit. Most of those on Gaby’s tree were still small. |
Adventure in Fruit
Besides mango and passion fruit, which occupy more than half of the grove, Gaby has planted many other exotic fruits—a few trees of each kind.
I get an education as we walk among them. We split open red leathery lychee to reveal translucent white flesh that tastes delightful.
Peeking under leafy boughs of another tree, I discover big green melon-like fruits growing out of the trunk of the tree and from the low-hanging branches.
“This is jakfruit—the largest of all tree fruits,” she says. “I’ve grown them up to 60 pounds. Cut this one—it’s at least 25,” she indicates.
Its tough rind is formed of prickly, cone-shaped points. The jakfruit is an armload, and it smells strange. “Don’t be put off until you taste the fruit inside,” says Gaby.
All About the Ice Cream
1 p.m.» In her little ice cream factory, we peel a small mountain of mangoes. Gaby teaches me to cut off plump “cheeks” of sunny yellow flesh from each side of the core. Her helper, Enriqueta, then purees the fruit in a food processor.
Ann and Gaby peel and core mangoes for employee Enriqueta to puree. |
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Gaby taste-tests a batch of Mango Passion Melange to check the flavor before the mixture goes into the ice cream machine. The payoff is a fabulous treat! |
1:45 p.m.» It takes more muscle to cut tough-skinned passion fruit in half. I scoop out the insides into a bowl and whir through the stuff with a hand blender to separate the seeds from the pulp and produce frothy juice.
2:30 p.m.» As Gaby says, “Cutting up a jakfruit is an event in and of itself!” Because the rind is full of latex, we must coat our hands and knives with vegetable oil.
The sticky, gooey stuff oozes out as I slice the big, malodorous thing into quarters. The inside smells a bit better. Gaby tells me it is used to flavor Juicy Fruit Gum.
Clove-shaped fruit segments surrounded by fibers circle the jakfruit’s core. We pull out the cloves one by one, peeling away the fiber and removing a round brown seed. It’s a messy and very labor-intensive process.
I eat one clove, then another. Can’t say I love jakfruit, but it’s growing on me.
3:30 p.m.» We make Mango Passion Melange ice cream, a best seller. Her recipe calls for mango puree, passion fruit juice, sugar and a cream-based ice cream mix formulated especially for her fruity specialties. I stir the ingredients in a 5-gallon pail with a whisk so big it could belong to a giant!
Gaby taste-tests the liquid and gives it a nod of approval before I pour it into her commercial ice cream machine. In less than 10 minutes, it’s ready. I catch the frosty treat in 5-quart tubs when Gaby opens a valve.
“Usually, I process fruit all afternoon and make ice cream the next day,” she says, as we mix another batch. “But I wanted you to see the process from beginning to end.”
4:30 p.m.» What a delectable end it is! After packing ice cream into pints and quarts for tomorrow’s orders, I get to sample quite a few of her 20 flavors. Spoonfuls of Mango Passion Melange, Jumping Jakfruit, Luscious Lychee, Me Gusta Guava and Mamey Sapote Dearest have me swooning. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!
It tastes extra special because I’ve seen all the hard work and TLC that Gaby puts into it.
“I just wanted to have fun and make a living,” she says with a satisfied smile. “But let me tell you, I work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day in my little ice cream business!”
Editor’s Note: Get to Gaby’s Farm Web site from our links page.