Top-Op

Top-Op is an Asian grocery label with a broad, mixed range, from tinned tropical fruit and dessert ingredients to nuts, grains and individual spices. Its strength is the less common ingredient, such as toddy palm seed or kala jeera, sold in plain packs alongside everyday basics.

Top-Op tins sit in fruit in syrup: lychees, coconut meat, nata de coco and toddy palm seed slices. Dessert makers will find china grass under agar and gelatine and yellow sev under falooda. There are roasted monkey nuts under peanuts, white quinoa, and spices including kala jeera under cumin seeds, clove powder, whole haldi under herbal spices and rai bhardo under fenugreek and mustard powder.

Lychees and toddy palm seed are chilled and served with their syrup, or folded into a fruit cocktail with nata de coco for a Thai or Filipino style dessert. China grass sets milk into a firm, sliceable pudding and sets the layers of a falooda, which then gets yellow sev, rose syrup and basil seeds. Monkey nuts are the shell-on peanuts for cracking with a cup of tea. Rai bhardo, split mustard seed, is the base of Gujarati pickles such as methia keri, kala jeera perfumes Kashmiri and Mughlai rice, and whole dried turmeric is ground fresh at home.

Store china grass and sev in sealed packs in a dry place, and refrigerate leftover tinned fruit in a covered bowl, never in the open tin. To compare, see the tinned fruit from Del Monte and our dessert mixes.