Dragon Fruit Wine

Recipe from winemaking jackkeller

Red Dragon Fruit Wine
6 lbs ripe red pitaya fruit
2 lb sugar
6 pts water
1 crushed Campden tablet
1 1/2 tsp acid blend
1 tsp pectic enzyme
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 pkt wine yeast

Put water on to boil. Meanwhile, carefully trim the greenery from the fruit, wash the fruit well, and chop it coarsely. Put chopped fruit, sugar and yeast nutrient into primary.

When water boils, pour into primary and stir until sugar dissolves. Cover with a sanitized cloth and set aside to cool. When at room temperature, add crushed Campden tablet and stir.

Recover primary and set aside for 12 hours. Add pectic enzyme, stir, recover primary, and set aside another 12 hours. Add activated yeast. Stir daily for 7 days.

Strain through nylon straining bag and squeeze juice out of red pitaya pulp. Transfer liquid to secondary, top up if required and fit airlock. Rack, top up and refit airlock every 30 days until wine clears and no new sediments form during a 30-day period.

Stabilize, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days, and rack into bottles. Like most wines, it should improve with age.

Dragon Fruit Personal Care Products?

For the ladies....use the fruit skin for a facial. Leave it on for 10 minutes...and wash it away. Tightens up your skin ever so nicely. No need to buy any expensive masks….It works great.

As a matter of fact the Dragon Fruit has been made to personal care products due to it's richness of anti-oxidants essential that is needed to preserve the beauty of the skin.

Dragon Fruit Recipes

Recipe from mwaf

Jams:
Drain peaches and reserve juice. In a saucepan, bring peach juice and cinnamon to a boil, and then simmer for 10 minutes. Pour liquid over peach halves and cool. In a blender puree Tropical Dragon fruit, raspberries & liqueur (if desired). Refrigerate. Place peach halves in dessert cups, garnish with scoop of ice cream and top tropical dragon fruit sauce.

Recipes from Pitaberry

BBQ Quail on Red Dragon Fruit with Balsamic Onions
You need :
4 De-boned Quail
1 Dragon Fruit - peeled & diced
16 Cocktail Onions
100ml Balsamic Vinegar
40 ml Olive Oil

Method:
Season quail generously with salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.
Place quail, skin side down on a preheated char grill, turning over after about 2 minutes.
In a hot frying pan sauté the cocktail onions until tender, deglaze with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and set aside.
When both the quails and onions are ready place precut dragon fruit on a serving plate.
Cut quail in ½ and position on the fruit.
Spoon onions over and drizzle the dish with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Dragon Fruit Boat
You need :
200gms Chicken Meat - cut into pieces
200gms Prawn Meat - cut into pieces
2 Dragon Fruits
1 Kiwi Fruit - skinned and cut into pieces
2 Strawberries - cut into pieces

Sauce Mix:
1 1/2 tbsp Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce
1 1/2 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Chopped Mint [optional]
75 ml Water
2 tsp Lime Juice
2 tsp Corn Starch

Method:
Cut dragon fruits into halves lengthwise.
Scoop the flesh out to make balls of about 200 g [7 oz].
Remove any remaining flesh and keep the skin of dragon fruits.
Stir-fry chicken and prawn meat in 2 tbsp oil until done.
Add sauce mix and cook until sauce thickens.
Stir in all fruits. Serve hot on skin of dragon fruits.


Recipe from tropicalfruitnursery

Red Dragon Martini aka Dragontini
Ingredients:
• Four cups of top shelf Vodka
• Two tablespoons of sugar
• One half Red Dragon fruit
• Garnish with Red Dragon fruit for contrast.

Taste of the Dragon Fruit

What does the Dragon Fruit taste like? There seems to be a lot of differing
opinions pertaining to what the fruit actually taste like. Some has said that
it has a melon like flavour and some has even associate it to kiwi or even pears.

As for me it looks quite similar to kiwifruit with the seeds and all,
but that is as far as the similarities go. A good grade dragon fruit @ pitaya @ matanaga will taste much better and sweeter. I find the taste of the dragon fruit to be crunchy with its seed and
the sweetness is just right with plenty of juice. The red and yellow varieties
are better in taste as compared to the white variety.

It is a must try for everyone. The Dragon Fruit is best eaten chilled. It is a great fruit to grow, eat or even made to drinks.

In conclusion A simply delicious fruit! Give it a try and You'll love it.

Nutritional Value

Dragon Fruit can be grown organically, without any pesticide & chemical fertilizer. It is rich in vitamins and helpful to our body especially in digestion, preventing colon cancer and diabetes. The fruits also help to neutralize heavy metal toxic and reduce cholesterol level and high blood pressure. Consume regularly, it can fight against asthma and cough.

(extract wikipedia)Dragonfruit is also rich in phytoalbumins which are highly valued for their antioxidant properties. Antioxidants prevent the formation of cancer-causing free radicals. In Taiwan, diabetics use the fruit as a food substitute for rice and as a source of dietary fiber.

This is a general table of the nutritional values in Dragon Fruit. Each species of either the Hylocereus or S. Megalanthus have slightly different values.

• Water (Moisture) - 83g
• Protein - 0.229g
• Fat - 0.61g
• Fiber - 0.9g
• Carotene - 0.012mg
• Calcium - 8.8mg
• Phosphorus - 36.1mg
• Iron - 0.65mg
• Vitamin A (Retinol) - 25mg
  
• Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) - 0.043mg
• Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) - 0.045mg
• Vitamin B3 (Niacin) - 0.43mg
• Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) - 25mg

Fertilizers

After the cutting has been planted, wait about a month before apply the fertilizers. The roots would have taken place by then and the stem would have started to grow.

Application of fertilizers varies from place to place. In Malaysia we apply about 100g - 400g of fertilizers in the initial stages when the plant is growing. Compost is made from waste such as vegetable cuttings, palm oil, wood, soy bean etc to cover the area about 2ft - 3ft in diameter.

Fertilizers should not be applied too close to the plants as the acidity of the fertilizers could have an impact on the growth of the cutting itself.

This has been recommended by some Malaysian growers:

For Flowering -

Increase "K" and "P" and lower the "N"

For Fruiting -

Increase "K" fertilizer + "other". Lower the "N"

It is vital that the Nitrogen level of the fertilizers are lowered as the plants starts to grow.

What is NPK (extract from bareroot)

Ok, so your confused. On some nutrients the NPK seems low, like 2-1-3. And on others it can be high, 14-24-16. Whats the deal here?

Nutrient values (N-P-K)are expressed as total percentage of weight as packaged. Organic nutrients typically tend to have lower npk values than chemical nutrients. Don't let this fool you, you can easily burn plants if you overfertilize!

Powder nutrients tend to have higher NPK values than liquid nutrients because they are not already partially diluted with water. Do not let low N-P-K values fool you, what really matters is how strong these nutrients are when diluted to recommended levels ie: thier tds/ppm/ms/eC/cf. For example SuperVeg will give you a tds of around 1000 ppm when used according to directions, while Aquafeed "V" Powder will have a tds of around 600 ppm if used as recommended.

What does N-P-K stand for?

N = Nitrogen 7-9-5
Nitrogen is the first major element responsible for the vegetative growth of plants above ground. With a good supply, plants grow sturdily and mature rapidly, with rich, dark green foliage.

P = Phosphorus 7-9-5
The second major element in plant nutrition, phosphorus is essential for healthy growth, strong roots, fruit and flower development, and greater resistance to disease.

K = Potassium (Potash) 7-9-5
The third major plant nutrient, potassium oxide is essential for the development of strong plants. It helps plants to resist diseases, protects them from the cold and protects

Making Compost in 3 weeks

Pollination

The flowers of the Dragon Fruit are big about 30cm across and beautiful. They also only bloom at night which is a main problem as the general pollinators like the bees and birds are missing. The flowers do sometimes open till around 8am in the morning but it will depend on the weather. Many of the varieties are not self-compatible; therefore, the flowers need to be cross pollinated with pollen from a different clone or species in order to set fruit.

On the safe side new plantings should use 2 or 3 different genetic types (not from the same clone). Cross pollination between the different genetic types in the plant will assure better fruit set and size. Moths and bats are good pollinators since flowers open at night when there is no bee activity.

Flower about to close with bees as pollinators

Hand pollination is one method to ensure that the flowers set fruit but this adds a considerable amount to the labor cost of growing these fruit. Hand pollination is carried out easily by physically removing anthers from one flower and touching them to the stigma of another or collecting the pollen and using a brush to pollinate multiple flowers. Pollen is most viable at the time of flower opening, but hand pollination was found to be successful well into the evening of the following day (Weiss et al., 1994).

Many of the varieties from Asia (predominantly H. undatus) are self-compatible, and some of these are autogamous and will set fruit without the involvement of a pollen vector. It has been previously reported (Weiss et al., 1994) that Selenicereus megalanthus, the yellow pitaya, is autogamous. The anthers and stigma are at the same height in these flowers and touch as the flower closes.

Anthers and Stigma are of same height

They also found that in their clones of Hylocereus species the anthers and stigma were separated by at least 2 cm. This may be the reason why their self-compatible Hylocereus undatus clone was not autogamous.

Anthers and Stigma of different height


Hand pollinating using a brush