Fruitshakes, like milkshakes but blended from condensed milk, sugar syrup and the fruit of your choice. In practice the fruit was generally frozen, rather than fresh, and the result so sweet as to add to your thirst.
Jack fruit. The fruits can be enormous, up to 1 meter (3 ft) in length and weigh as much as 100 lb (45 kg). For this reason they are most often sold ready cut, in sections. The colour of the flesh varies with the variety, and can be anything from yellow to pink. They grow in the Western Ghats range of mountains. When the fruits are immature, they provide a starchy vegetable which needs to be cooked. When ripe, they are sweet, with a strong flavour. The section should be set on a board and the thickened heart cut out. This means cutting it across ways, about half way down, below the internal stem.The flesh can then be pulled away in hunks enclosing seeds. The seeds can be peeled and cooked and have a flavour of chestnuts. The hunks of flesh which held the seeds can be stuffed with sweet fillings. In appearance they are light green, ripening to yellow brown, and covered in hard, knobbly spines.
Dragon fruit or pitaya. A striking purplish red or yellow fruit from Central America, twice the size of a passion fruit. It is pithy inside with an an unnaturally white sweet jelly with black pinpricks of edible seeds. I think it looks and tastes unnatural.
A bottle gourd or calabash cucumber which is pale green on the outside, creamy, yellowish-white inside and looks like a cucumber with a bulge at one end. Only the very young gourds are used for cooking. When older they are most commonly known as calabash and develop a hard, woody shell which may be used for making bowls and musical instruments.
Lemon or lime. These seem to be interchangeable. Since the lime grows much more readily than the lemon in India this is more likely to be a lime.
Rambutan. Related to the lychee with similar slippery, juicy white flesh around a black stone. It has stiff skin covered with hard, but not sharp red and yellow spikes, all of which is easy to remove. In Thailand they are in season from May to September. It is said that seeds in the wild only germinate when they have passed through a monkey's gut.
