Pome... Pome WHAT?!!
I came across a weird fruit today. Initially I thought it was a pink guava but when my friend cut it open and offered to me, I was like "What's this?". My friend mumbled a name but it couldn't register in my mind. It sounded like "Pome" something. So I asked "Pome.... WHAT?!". My friend mumbled the answer again and it sounded like "Pome-grenade". "Oh...I never heard of this fruit before". He then said... it's called "Buah Delima" in Malay. Nope...never heard of that either.
It's really easy to cut the fruit. My friend just scored the skin with a knife and then broke it open. The inside looked rather gross though... like some tumour growth... yucks.
The correct spelling for this fruit is "Pomegranate" and it is native to the region from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran to the Himalayas in northern India. However it is cultivated and naturalized in several other countries, Malaysia being one of them.
The part that you eat is its seed casings (called the aril). I found it rather tedious though. You need to separate the aril from the skin, then put it in your mouth and try to extract the seed from the aril with your tongue. It tasted sweet but before I could savor it, the taste was gone as the aril was so damn little. My friend told me to take in a handful of them .... then I had to do some tongue exercise to get those seeds out. With so much of hardwork, this fruit better have a lot of nutrients!
