Mangoes

There are dozens of shapes, sizes, and colors of mango, from orange-size to melon-size; green to yellow, orange, or red; exceedingly tart to syrupy sweet. Both ripe and unripe mangoes are useful: unripe for chutney, pickling, and making amchoor, and ripe for eating straight, making salsas, fruit salads, and cooking, especially on the grill. The small yellow Alfonso mangoes are, for my money, the best of the most commonly available.

Preparing: The method you choose will depend on your knife skills and your patience. The quick and messy way is to just peel off the skin—a vegetable peeler or paring knife makes quick work of it—and attack. For a neater presentation, trim a piece off the bottom end. Stand the fruit on a cutting board, trim off the skin with a sharp paring knife, then slice fruit from around the pit. For small pieces, cut the flesh off each side of the pit without peeling. Score the flesh in a cross-hatch pattern without cutting through the skin. Then turn each half inside out and cut away the cubes.

Other fruits you can use: papaya, cantaloupe or other fleshy orange melon, oranges