Custard apple. Sitaphal. A tropical fruit which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. When buying choose very soft fruits indeed. The skin of all of them is green or purplish-green and scaly, almost fir-cone patterned, in appearance. Inside, the flesh is creamy in colour and consistency, but has to be sucked from the shiny black seeds. The flesh has a sweet-sour flavour, sometimes slightly custardy and larger ones have the luscious and complex taste of banana, mango and vanilla. They are often made into fritters, or sliced and steeped in wine. The custard apples include cherimoyas, sweet sops, sour sops and atemoyas.
Poppy seeds, from the seed of the opium poppy. They are improved by roasting and are used for thickening curries instead of cornflours or other starches.
The largest tea producing area in the world and one of the three main tea growing areas of India. The Assam valley in the Brahmaputra valley in the north of India produces strong, fresh, mature, pungent, high quality black teas with a reddish tinge. This is a good tea to drink at breakfast instead of coffee or when you need a bit of a boost. It is sometimes described as the red wine of the tea world. The tea has distinctive brown and golden leaves which, when they are dried, are called "orange".
Wallago. A catfish of the family of sheatfishes, the Siluridae. It can reach 240 cm (8 ft) in length and is found from Bangladesh to Vietnam and Afghanistan. This aggressive fish is quite feared in some river areas. It is not uncommon to find large fish or frogs in their stomachs.
