Bizarre Fruits

I was shopping at our local grocery store the other day and noticed a new section of fruit. Some of them were familiar to me, but many of them were new...and exciting.

I was preparing for a dinner party that evening, the theme: Ethiopian food. This all was decidedly un-Ethiopian, but very exotic and I decided to purchase a pile of fruit and give everyone a knife and cutting board to dice up their fruit. We served the motley collection with four different ice cream flavors.

There was one fruit called Buddha's hands that I did not buy. It was ten dollars and I had a full basket...but I will definitely go back and try it. I pasted a picture from wikipedia on this citrus fruit above. To me it looks more like a yellow baby octopus. :)

From what I can remember, here is what I purchased left to right:

Red Banana - These are about half the size of a regular banana and a bit sweeter.
Horned Melon - This orange fruit has little spikes all over and was a pretty green inside.
Pitahaya (or Dragon Fruit) - Red on the outside but grayish in color on the inside with little black edible seeds. I can't seem to find this one in the picture.
Mango and Kiwi - My fall back fruit.
Star Fruit - This is the tall yellow fruit with the five ridges. When you slice this fruit it actually has the shape of a star. Ours was very tart, but you can find sweeter varieties.
Persimmon - This is the reddish orange fruit on the far right. It was mealy and not too flavorful. I was reminded of a papaya.
Rambutan - I think this was the most unusual. It look like a small red lychee nut with dark bristles all around it. Very easy to peel and fairly sweet compared to the other citrus fruit we tried.

I am definitely not doing these fruit justice. For great pictures and a thorough explanation of several exotic fruit I have listed here, check out: http://www.squidoo.com/exoticfruit. All this simply to say, if you haven't had it before and it is staring you in the face at the grocery store, try it!! You may find something you like. I had no idea what some of these different fruits were going to taste like, so I let my guests participate in the experience.

So, my readers, what new foods have you seen in the supermarket and did you have the kahoonies to try it? What did you think?