Description of the fruits of finger lime. Chemical composition, useful properties and harm of the fruit. Who shouldn't use it and why. How to eat and cook Australian fingerlime, recipes. The benefits of finger lime are especially great for those who suffer from vitamin deficiency, do not eat meat, or have problems with the absorption of nutrients due to gastrointestinal diseases.
Contraindications and harm of finger lime
This fruit is very satisfying, so you won't be able to eat much of it. If abused, it may cause pain and discomfort in the stomach, upset stools, accompanied by diarrhea. In some cases, it can cause allergies, sometimes there is an individual intolerance to the product.
It is worth excluding finger lime in case of exacerbation of stomach and duodenal ulcers, colitis, gastritis, gastroduodenitis, pancreatitis, cholecystitis, biliary dyskinesia and other digestive problems.
This fruit should be very carefully introduced into the diet of young children, pregnant and lactating mothers.
How is Australian fingerlime eaten
Since finger lime is most often eaten raw, it can be served with various alcoholic beverages - tequila, rum, cognac, sambuca, gin, berry liqueurs. Often they decorate plates with sandwiches and salads.
Chefs use this ingredient to prepare sauces, marinades, fruit and vegetable salads, and various drinks. It is ideal for decorating meat and fish dishes, slicing. Moreover, in cooking, it is relevant to use both the zest and the pulp of fruits, from which savory sauces, especially chutneys, as well as jams, marmalade, and refreshing drinks are made.
This type of lime does not "conflict" with any ingredients, emphasizing their flavor favorably. The fruit can complement any desserts, from pies to ice cream. It is best eaten raw rather than thermally processed. So the fruits are much tastier and healthier.
Finger Lime Recipes
The easiest way is to first divide the lime in half and spoon out the pulp from it, being careful not to crush it. Otherwise, all the juice will run out and only one shell will remain, which is already pointless to use, because the main value is still concentrated inside, and not in the skin.
Let's highlight the following finger lime recipes:
- Sauce … Heat the water (200 ml), dissolve sugar in it, preferably cane sugar (225 g), grind the chili to your liking and remove the pulp from the lime. Combine all the ingredients, whisk the mass and use it to season your favorite second courses. This sauce goes especially well with spaghetti and potatoes.
- Refueling … Break two eggs, separate the yolks from them, which should be used. Gently add 1 tbsp of lime pulp into them and add the same amount of non-sugar honey. After that, peel 2 cloves of garlic, chop them through a special crusher and combine with macadamia oil (250 ml). Stir well and whisk the mixture with a blender.
- Cakes … Combine sugar (175 g) and butter (175 g), previously melted. Beat them well with a blender until they are creamy. Then carefully add 3 large eggs (both yolks and whites) to the mass. Then peel 5 limes and grind them in a meat grinder. Then add this ingredient to the rest, sift flour here (about 120 g), pour in a little milk so that the mixture does not turn out too thin. Grease small baking tins with oil, pour the dough into them and place in the oven for about an hour. They must be kept here at a temperature of 160 ° C. When the cakes are ready, remove the tins from the oven, let them cool down and remove after 10 minutes.
- Smoothie … Combine in a deep and wide bowl one each avocado, green apple, lime and banana, a bunch of spinach, arugula (50 g), water (100 g) and sugar to your liking. Then beat the mass well with a blender, so that there are no lumps left in it. Refrigerate it and use it as a dessert, best for breakfast or dinner.
For those who do not want to spend a lot of time making limes, you can just gently take out its pulp and put it on a white loaf, greased with butter. As a result, you will end up with something like fish roe sandwiches.
Interesting Finger Lime Facts
Finger lime is very different from the usual one, it does not look like its “brother” either in shape, color or pulp. Outwardly, in structure, the latter is more like fish caviar. This is very often played up by the chefs of different restaurants, using it to prepare all kinds of sandwiches.
Fruits spoil quickly, and to avoid this they are often simply frozen. Temperature exposure does not affect their color, taste, or structure in any way. This allows the exotic fruit to be consumed literally all year round. When chewing, the "eggs" burst in the mouth, releasing the juice contained within them.
In Australia there are plantations specially designated for the cultivation of finger lime for export, their sale contributes a significant share of the income to the state treasury. It is also practiced in the USA, where there are quite large areas for this in the state of California. Regardless of the growing conditions, the fruits ripen by October-January, it is during this period that they are harvested.
This plant is grown in the same way as citrus fruits that are more familiar to us. It loves warmth and moisture and is very resistant to attacks of various pests like fruit fly. With this in mind, there is no ban on the importation of finger limes to other countries.
A boom in the sale of fruit began in the mid-1990s, just in those years the plant began to be cultivated commercially. In Europe and Asia, the demand for it is not very high, here it is replaced with ordinary lime, which is more affordable, and it is not that expensive. You can find these Australian fruits only mainly in online stores that deliver them to order.
Watch the video about the Australian finger lime:
Finding interesting finger lime recipes is not easy because it is not very popular among Europeans. But those that we have proposed should definitely please you. This fruit may not replace real caviar, but it will definitely be useful and worthily decorate a variety of dishes.
