Juicy goodness

By CHEF NERMALA DASS

FRUITS are nutritious and rich in vitamins. They are nature's gift to humankind.
When I was young, I never bothered with fruits. My senior chef used to say, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.”
I now know the health benefits of eating fruits and eat an apple everyday with my breakfast.
Fruits are usually eaten raw and commonly used in baking, especially for pastries and desserts.

COLOURFUL: Fruits can add sparkle to your cooking.

As a pastry chef, I love using fruits for my pastries. Hot, juicy and caramelised fruits right out of the hot oven. That’s just heavenly.
You can also use certain fruits in your cooking. But not all fruits can be used for cooking.
Sweet fruits are used for baking and the sour ones are usually used for cooking.
When cooking, some fruits add flavour to the dish while others are used for different purposes. Different fruits have different characteristics that can enhance your cooking.
For example, raw papaya is used to tenderise meat; raw mango to make the gravy taste a little sourish; peaches to caramelize roasted meat after it has been stewed for few hours.
There are fruits that you can only get from certain regions and during a specific season.
In western countries, you can find apples, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, blackberries, apricots, pears, blueberries, peaches, just to name a few.
In Asia, we have of course, the popular durian, rambutan, pineapple, banana, starfruit, papaya, guava, mango, jackfruit, and many more.
Cooking with fruits
1. When cooking a dish with fruits, you must know which fruits to use.
2. Make sure the fruit goes well with the other ingredients in the recipe.
3. Don't use sweet fruits with spices. It will overpower the taste of the dish. Sour fruits, such as green mango, pineapple and starfruit, go very well with spices.
4. Use less salt when cooking with fruits.
5. Choose fresh fruits. Always remember not to overcook the fruits.
6. Apricots, pears, and peaches go very well with meat and poultry.
7. Pineapples are tastier with prawns.
8. Fish goes well with any sweet and sour fruits such as the mango.
If you have never cooked with fruits before, here are three quick and simple recipes that you can try.