Category Archives: Fruit

‘Everything tastes better’: Guardian readers on their culinary discoveries of 2020

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From turning up the heat with exotic chillies to the ubiquitous and ultimately rewarding rise of sourdough, readers share their ingredients of the year

Discovering – or rediscovering – the joy of cooking has been one of the few bright spots of a year spent largely at home. We asked 43 of Australia’s leading chefs, cookbook authors and bloggers to share their favourite ingredient of the year. Their answers ranged from the humble and comforting (flour, mince, red lentils) to ingeniously umami (kombu, chilli bean curd, prawn oil), with native Australian ingredients also making many a No 1 spot (wattleseed, karkalla, cunjim winyu).

Now it’s our readers’ turn to share their finds.

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Yotam Ottolenghi’s Boxing Day recipes for using up Christmas leftovers

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Boxing Day BLT, veg samosas with cranberry sauce, and Christmas pudding eccles cakes with marzipan – stylish ways to use up excess food

The thing about Christmas day, as no one’s stomach needs reminding, is that there is always so much food. It is, however, a truth universally acknowledged that the whole point of cooking a great big bird – not to mention enough vegetables to feed twice as many people as are actually eating them – is to be able to enjoy the leftovers the day after. For all the ceremony, and the focus on the food served at the right time in the right place at the right temperature on Christmas Day, does anything, truly, beat the likes of a soft-bun sandwich filled with all the good bits? Gravy sauce for dipping into (and a sofa for sinking into) optional.

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10 tasty salads for cold winter nights, from roasted cauliflower to grilled sardines

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Who said salads had to be eaten in the summer? From Ottolenghi’s classic roast carrot concoction to Fare Sage’s warm fruit variety, there’s something for everyone

This is a tricky time of year for food. The cold weather and dark evenings cry out for the comforting hit of stodge, and yet a part of you realises that it’s sensible to keep your powder dry for the non-stop gorgefest offered by Christmas. Luckily, there is a middle ground. Although nobody in their right mind would choose to eat a traditional salad in this weather, winter salads are another thing entirely. Light and simple, but substantial enough to get you served at a tier 2 pub, these recipes should do the job nicely.

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X-ray checked avocados: ‘It benefits us all if people will stop squeezing them’

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In an Australian first, a farm in Western Australia is using infrared technology to scan for unbruised avocados

Whether it’s a gentle pinch of the tip, or a full-handed feel of the base, touching an avocado before you buy it is a commonplace grocery store habit. But Suzie Delroy, a second-generation farmer based just outside of Pemberton in southern Western Australia, dreams of the day avocado shopping becomes contactless. “We always do the best we can to control the avocado, but by far the biggest bruising occurs when people go and squeeze them.”

Her assessment is backed up by a 2015 report from Australian Horticultural Innovation that involved, among other experiments, using an e-glove sensor to see how hard shoppers were squeezing the fruit. The report found “bruise severity at the retail store display, and from the consumers’ home, was significantly higher than at all preceding sampling points”. Avocados Australia also states that the average avocado is touched by four would-be shoppers before it’s bought.

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Smelly durian fruit forces evacuation of Bavarian post office

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Workers taken ill after suspicious package emitting pungent odour causes panic

An overwhelming smell coming from a suspicious package at a Bavarian post office caused six workers to be taken to hospital and many more to be evacuated – only for police to discover that durian fruit, and not a dangerous gas, was the reason for the panic.

Police and firefighters rushed to the scene in Schweinfurt on Saturday over fears that a parcel was releasing a harmful substance. Twelve postal workers received treatment for nausea, including six who were taken to hospital as a precaution, the German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk reported.

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Rainforest Alliance certifying unethical pineapple farms, activists claim

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Group facing allegations that auditors are being duped in Costa Rica, where undocumented workers are being exploited

The Rainforest Alliance, one of the world’s most recognisable ethical certification schemes, is facing allegations of labour exploitation, use of illegal agrochemicals and the concealment of hundreds of undocumented workers at some of the pineapple plantations it certifies in Costa Rica. 

Rainforest Alliance-certified pineapples are sold in their millions at a premium price to consumers across the UK and Europe on the promise that they have been grown and harvested according to strict ethical and environmental standards.

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Library stink: smell of durian prompts evacuation at University of Canberra

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Fire and rescue teams in Australia remove rogue fruit in a sealed bag after it was left near an air vent

A piece of fruit prompted the evacuation of an Australian university library last week.

On Friday afternoon fire and rescue teams in the Australian Capital Territory responded to calls of “a strong smell of gas” inside the University of Canberra library.

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US will run out of avocados in three weeks if Trump closes Mexico border

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President says there is a ‘good likelihood’ he will close border this week if Mexico does not stop immigrants from reaching US

US consumers would run out of avocados in three weeks if Donald Trump makes good on his threat to close down the US–Mexico border.

Trump said on Friday that there was a “very good likelihood” he would close the border this week if Mexico did not stop immigrants from reaching the United States.

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