COVER STORY
fleshed ultimately won him over), added candied Buddha’s hand along with raw dragon fruit for contrast, a vanilla crème anglaise glaze, and edible orchids for a course served at a premium dining experience at the facility. “Everything kind of works really well together,” he says. “You’ve got the sweet kind of floral tropical-ness of the dragon fruit and then this citrus vibrancy of the Buddha’s hand, and then kind of all balanced out with the fact that the vanilla bean crème anglaise adds to it and it just kind of was reminiscent of being somewhere really cool and tropical.” He’s also working on playing around with even more tropical fruit for a Mother’s Day board (thank rambutan, lychee, and açai). “I love giving my residents exposure because it might not be something they’ve had before,” he says. “Plus tropical fruits are nutrient dense and the color profiles are captivating.” Corporate Executive Chef of Culinary and Nutrition Services Brittany Horn also loves playing with surprise ingredients and experimenting with the diversity of tropical fruits. When asked to create something fun and playful for a catering event at Healthcare Support Services, she turned to tomatillos for a mini tartlet reminiscent of apple pie. “Tomatillos aren’t traditionally savory, they’re bright and acidic, so I had this idea of playing around with them in a sweeter capacity,” says the chef with a baking and pastry background. She created pecan-graham cracker crust shells and added a tomatillo filling (thickened with flour and flavored with butter, sugar, and baking spices), toasted pecans, whipped cream, and honey. “The tomatillos get very soft when you cook them and that’s why they often get puréed into a sauce or chopped up fine, because they break down when you cook them,” she says. “They are also similar to okra when cut and help emulsify the filling so you get a smooth, silky texture.” Horn admits she was pleasantly surprised when it all came together: “It
of yuzu juice and guava purée cream, powdered sugar and candied pineapple. While fresh yuzu can be hard to grow and difficult to source (Horton says there are some great indoor yuzu farms) he tends to use bottled yuzu juice, which he prefers to other citrus like Meyer lemons. “It’s a citrus that’s much more floral, and if you can get the fresh juice and zest it’s incredible. The juice is even more floral and amazing and we like to use it in ponzu sauces.” While not on a menu yet, he plans to bring the tart back as a retail option at his hospitals. “It’s got butter, fat, sugar, and everything else, but it presents very lightly on the mouth and it’s pretty,” he says. It was the beauty of dragonfruit that initially inspired Cura Hospitality Executive Chef Robert Grotha for a
dessert at Aberdeen Heights senior living facility in Kirkwood, Mo. He scoured his local grocery store for multiple varieties of the tropical fruit native to Mexico and Central America, trying red, white and golden-fleshed dragon fruit for inspiration. “I took a vertical tasting to differentiate the different flavor profiles that they could bring to my palate so that I could serve those to my guests,” says the chef, who picked up some Buddha’s hand citrus as well. “I love how underutilized it can be and I went down the rabbit hole of Key limes and preservation methods, and Buddha’s hand is one that I wanted to kind of explore more.” Grotha leaned into his French cooking background to make a pâte de fruit with the red-fleshed dragon fruit using the juice (the color and pop of the classic red-
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