Fresh Fruit

Fruit does two jobs in a South Asian kitchen and they pull in different directions. Lemons and limes are kitchen equipment, squeezed over chaat and fried fish, salted down into pickle, stirred into nimbu pani on a hot afternoon. Mangoes, bananas and papaya are eaten for themselves, and the green mangoes that look unripe are not: they are what a proper mango pickle or a sour curry is made from.

Ripe, unripe and in between

Buying fruit here means knowing which of those you are after. A green mango should be hard and sour and stays that way; a ripe one gives slightly at the stem and smells of itself. Bananas and papaya finish ripening at home on the worktop, away from the fridge, which blackens the skins and stalls them. Citrus is the opposite and keeps far longer cold.

What goes with what

Sour fruit and salt belong together, which is the whole idea behind lunu dehi, lime pickle and the green mango that goes into a Sri Lankan curry. Sweet fruit tends to meet dairy instead, in lassi, falooda and shrikhand.

When the fruit is for pickling, the pickles, pastes and sauces department holds the ready made versions, and spices and masalas has the chilli powder, mustard and fenugreek a homemade one needs.