The curuba is one of many passion fruits. Unlike the typical purple one that is sometimes available in U.S. supermarkets, the curuba has a soft yellow skin rather than a hard shell. Its flower is not as ornate at the passion flower vine that can be grown from seed here but is a simpler pink.
In Colombia there are three common passion fruits: curuba, maracuya, and granadilla. Curuba and maracuya are usually made into juice because they are very tart but granadilla can be eaten as is from its shell with a spoon. The quality of granadillas has improved since 1970s and they are very delicious now. You eat the seeds along with the pulp and yes, it is a little like eating mocos but tastes a lot better…
There is also a much larger passion fruit called the badea (Passiflora quadrangularis) which is the size of a small football. I’ve only eated two: one that my husband’s father grew and that was very fragrant and tasty; a second that I bought from a supermarket on our last trip to Bogota in December of 2006 that was somewhat tasteless for a passion fruit.
Maracuya in Colombia has a hard yellow shell and can range in diameter from 3 to 5 inches. The ones that you can currently find in Bogota supermarkets are more in the 5 inch range and have definitely increased in size since the 1970s. The pulp is wonderfully fragrant but very tart and so they cannot be eaten out of hand. The pulp-encased seeds are scooped out of the shell, placed in the blender with sugar and water, and gently blended in order to separate the pulp and juice from the seeds but not to pulverize the seeds. Then the juice is strained. Goya offers the seedless pulp frozen in plastic bags in the U.S.
Curuba is less tart than maracuya but is slightly more astringent and so adding milk to the blended and strained pulp results in a better beverage.
