Nance tastes very tart and has a mushy texture.  I’ve found it around the US, frozen and in bottles, called ‘Yellow Cherries’ (spoiler alert: they do not taste anything like cherries, I don’t even like them that much by themselves).  I prefer making a nance juice, pesada, or to use it on dessert recipes.

Pesada is a cooked smooth cream, prepared with the fruit ‘nance’, with water, sugar, and cornstarch.  Those are the main components as far as I know, but when the nance is not tart enough, my mom likes to add pineapples or passion fruit juice.  It is served warm or cold with crumbled salty queso fresco on top.

Ingredients:

2 bottles of Nance (approximately 6-8 cups)
3 l of Water
1 cup of Cornstarch
3/4 cup of Sugar
Optional: pineapple chunks/juice, lime or passion fruit juice

Instructions

(Follow the Photo-Steps ^_^)

1. Add Nance with enough water to cover a little bit above the surface.

2. Blend for a few secs, 5-10, quick to avoid blendingç/breaking the seeds.

3. Use a colander to make sure you don’t get those seeds in your pot!

4.  Press the nance through the colander with your hands. That way it will be gentle and you will avoid getting seeds in your pesada.

5. Add a little extra water or juice and squeeze as much fruit as you can out of that Nance!

6. Taste the nance mixture, and if it’s too bland, blend a some mixture with a little bit of a sour fruit such as: pineapple, passion fruit or lime juice.  Blend the fruit and make sure you pass through a sieve to make sure your pesada stays smooth.

7.  Set the pot in medium high heat, add the sugar and cornstarch and keep stirring for 7-12 minutes, until the pesada thickens up.  If you’d like a thicker pesada, mix more cornstarch with a citrus juice, add to mixture and cook for a few more minutes.

8. Serve the Pesada de Nance with a lot of ‘Queso Blanco – Molido’ you could try with several types of cheeses, even cottage or feta, but traditionally queso blanco does it for us Panamanians!

¡a comer!