Chesa, Anyone?

Hubby brought these home from our place in Pangasinan last month. It took a week for them to ripen to this color.

I don’t know what they call it in other areas but in our home province in Pangasinan, we simply call it Chesa. The unripe green fruit is as hard as a rock  but when it ripens, it becomes golden-yellow or orange. The flesh is a little creamy and sweet, more like squash or a yolk of an egg when it is cooked.  It’s not a very popular fruit. Actually, I only see them during Christmas season and New Year where the enterprising vendors sell several kinds of fruits to complete the thirteen traditional fruits for display at the dining table.

A quick search on Google says that Chesa is also called Canistel, Egg Fruit,  Tiessa, Tisa, Zapote, or Sapote (varieties include Sapodilla, Yellow Sapote, Mamey Sapote, Green Sapote, Black Sapote, Chapote, South American Sapote.  It is called Pautaria Campechiana  and belongs to the family of sapotaceae, a large, symmetrical, bushy, everygreen tree. It’s probably loaded with Vitamin A because of its yellow color.  It’s rare nowadays to find this fruit in commercial quantity since most of the fruit-bearing trees are not commonly found unlike mangoes or some Philippine fruits in season.

Chesa, anyone?