A small, squat, regular shaped pear which has a bright clear green skin with no russeting at all. It ripens slowly to a yellowish-green and is a dessert pear rather than a cooking pear, with soft, sweet, juicy flesh.
The classic Italian red bush tomato from which the paste is made. The 75 g (2½ oz) fruits are slow to ripen outside.
The Nara melon is an unpromising, low-growing, spiny, cactus-like shrub growing along the coast of south west Africa through Namibia. Both the fruit and the seeds are edible. The ripe fruits are eaten raw and are prized for their high water content. The pulp can be scraped out and squeezed to obtain a potable liquid. The seeds, or nuts, are dried and used for making flour or eaten as they are, like almonds or cooked into a brown pulp and layed out to dry. In its dry form it is eaten as a sort of fruit leather or jerky, a sort of vegetable version of biltong.
The nara nut is a seed about the size of a large melon seed from the nara melon,This is an unpromising, low-growing, spiny, cactus-like shrub growing along the coast of south west Africa through Namibia. Both the fruit and the seeds are edible. The ripe fruits are eaten raw and are prized for their high water content. The pulp can be scraped out and squeezed to obtain a potable liquid. The seeds, or nuts, are dried and used for making flour or eaten as they are, like almonds or cooked into a brown pulp and layed out to dry. In its dry form it is eaten as a sort of fruit leather or jerky, a sort of vegetable version of biltong.
Atlantic rock oyster. A variety of oyster up to 15 cm (6") in length found on the American side of the Atlantic. Unlike many oysters this is usually cooked, served on the half shell. This is because it is quite a fatty oyster, particularly when large, which is improved by cooking. All down the eastern seaboard the Atlantic oyster is called after the area in which it is found, e.g. the Long Island oyster, Chesapeake Bay oysters and so on. The best known is probably the bluepoint.
Native oysters. There are two types of sea water oyster readily available in the United Kingdom and most of Europe: rock (Crassostrea gigas) and native oysters (Ostrea edulis). Native oysters (known in France as belons) are small, flattish and circular in shape and with a brownish-green, relatively smooth shell. They are difficult to farm, take four to five years to mature and are not disease resistant. Not only are they more scarce than rock oysters, they are also more highly regarded, with firm flesh and a subtle, delicate flavour. Rock oysters are relatively abundant; the meat is held in a deep elongated cup with a flat 'lid' and the shells are rugged and warty, covered in coarse textured bumps and crevices. The flesh is less substantial than that of the natives and the flavour sharper, even metallic. When the word 'oysters' is used alone this will almost always indicate rock oysters as, if they are natives, they will invariably be described as such.
