Pupunha

Boiled and split, a pinch of salt is the only seasoning it has ever really needed.

Mashed with butter it reads exactly like a very orange sweet potato.

A drizzle on the boiled flesh turns a savoury starch toward dessert.

Squeaky salted cheese alongside the boiled flesh, the same stack tucumã gets.

Warmth on a starchy, faintly bitter flesh that would otherwise sit flat.

Simmered in coconut milk it turns from a snack into a savoury Amazonian stew base.

Warm spice pushes the pumpkin-and-chestnut register toward dessert rather than a side.

Amazonian fish stews thicken with the mashed flesh the way others use potato, and the shrimp gives it savour.

A very un-Amazonian sugar on a starchy palm fruit that already tastes faintly of it.