Little Round Pickled Fruits -- ID Help?

[jumpingmonk]

(Note: We split this thread from: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/707681 so more people would see this question -- The Chowhound Team )

I have done so.

In return, I could use a little OT help from you, since you frequent Manhattan's CTown as much as I do and are better versed at Chinese names. Do you happen to know the identity of the little round pickled fruits that are sold in tubs by the Candided crabapple seller who walks the block between E Broadway and Division are called. Small round pale yellowy white with with spots which actually are also in the flesh. hard texture.Flavor hard to tell under the salt and vinegar. Pit three sided and (I discovered this when I left a few on my raditator), explosive when dry (the other pits I am getting seed out of are now covered with a plastic container as a "blast sheild, the one the popped in the open did it with such for it almost broke the lightbulb in my bedside lamp) . If you happend to know the Chinese name for these, maybe I can googe and get the scientific one.

[soupkitten]

do you think it could be a gooseberry?

http://www.cookatease.com/nellikkai-u...

note: there are i think a couple hundred varieties of gooseberry, different colors and many w spots

[jumpingmonk]

THAT'S IT (I found a photo of the seeds online and they match perfetcly)

I got a little confused becuse I was thinking of the eruopean gooseberry. You know I thoigh it might be some sort of Phyllanthus (the pits are sort of similar)

[soupkitten]

yay! glad i could help

[buttertart]

Those are bigass gooseberries!

[jumpingmonk]

Not really. Gooseberry is just a term of convenience; these things are not related to the European Gooseberry, Ribes uva-crispa. These things grow on short trees. I imagine the "gooseberry" application was added by the British, who thoght they either looked (they are pale green) or tasted similar. it's not all that different to how lian wu are often called rose apples or wax apples, even though they are no realtion to apples, any more than are custard apples. Or how the smaller Malpigia fruits are called barbados cherries or surinam cherries.

[buttertart]

Interesting. Remember when kiwis were called Chinese gooseberries? With those, I can sort of see a flavor rationale for the name.

[PotatoHouse]

Could it be a Kumquat?

[jumpingmonk]

No, I know what a Kumquat looks like, they're orange and have an orange like structure inside not a central pit.

[The Chowhound Team]

We split this thread from: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/707681 so it wasn't buried in an unrelated thread.

[buttertart]

No, sorry, I don't. An olive of some sort?

[jumpingmonk]

Wrong type of pit. I guess I'll have to plant the seed and see

[buttertart]

I don't remember seeing anything of the sort here or overseas. What's the pit look like?

[jumpingmonk]

sorta hard to describe. It's triangular but inflated (that is it's a triangle with sides the bulge out. At each edge and the middle of each side is a rige at the top of the seed capsule are three holes, each of wich contains some "whiskers" (filaments from the frut that stay around once you remove the restv at the bottom is a hard "spindle". When the seed capusle blows up (along those ridges I mentioned), it splits into three secontios (each of which later breaks along the other rige into a total of six. in each side of the "middle break" is a small wedge shaped seed (to me it's about the shape of a morning glory seed but a little bigger) usually white, occasionally brown. That's really the best I can describe it. I'd post a photo, but they to small for the scanner, and my phone cameria has lousy resolution.