Passion fruit (chinola in The Dominican Republic) is a wrinkly, strange little fruit that grows on an ambitious vine that will quickly take over your entire backyard if you let it!  Now, I haven’t actually planted one, but that hasn’t stopped it invading my yard from the house behind me.   It has twined its way through my palm tree fence and is dropping little chinolas all over my lawn!  I’m not complaining.  This healthful fruit provides a ton of nutritional benefits including a long list of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.  It’s known to boost immune systems, is thought to help prevent cancer, provides fibre, improves circulation and regulates blood pressure. For a complete list of its nutritional benefits, check out organicfacts.net.  If you don’t have access to fresh passion fruit, you can buy the puree (what I do below) at latino or some big box grocery stores.

Between ourselves and our neighbours, this little vine has been producing about 20 chinolas every few days! At first, I wasn’t sure what the heck to do with them.  When you cut open a chinola it looks a little daunting…  Inside is a white rind-like outer edge and a mushy yellow/orange pulp with little oval seeds throughout.  It is kind of slimy and tastes incredibly sour.  If I hadn’t actually had chinola juice before, I’d have told you that trying to do anything with this fruit was was a waste of time.

Google can teach you anything!  Here is my homemade instructional take on how to make chinola or passion fruit juice: