Featherback. A thin, silver fish with a marked row of dark spots running parallel to the anal fin. This is quite a bony fish but often pounded or scraped clean of the bones.
Tamarind, either green or ripe. Tamarind is a sour-sweet fruit, sometimes known as the Indian date, used as a souring agent. It comes in long, dry brown pods which look almost like dried broad bean pods. Inside is a long, segmented fruit, like a long brown caterpillar. Each segment contains a hard, shiny black seed. As the pods dry the fruit becomes sweeter. A visitor from Mauritius suggested shaking the tamarind and, if you could hear that the fruit had detached and was rattling a little inside the pod, you would find that the fruit was sweet. All you need to do is to remove the pod and then chew the fruit, discarding the seeds. It is also available mashed and formed into a pulpy block or as a juice. In this form it is used like lemon juice.
Split black gram lentil. Hulled, it is a creamy white, which is why it is sometimes called white gram.
