Sri Lanka has variety of fruits – (Srilanka), from the familiar to the bizarre, including several classic Southeast Asian fruits introduced from Indonesia by the Dutch.Familiar fruits include pineapple,mangoes (April–June & Nov–Dec), avocados (April–June) and coconuts, as well as a wide variety of bananas, from small sweet yellow specimens to enormous red monsters.
Papaya (pawpaw), a distinctively sweet and pulpy fruit, crops up regularly in fruit salads, but the king of Sri Lankan fruits is undoubtedly the jackfruit (April–June & Sept–Oct), the world’s largest fruit ,whose fibrous flesh can either be eaten raw or used as an ingredient in curries.
Durian (May–July) is another outsized specimen: a large green beast with a spiky outer shell. It’s very much an acquired taste: though the flesh smells rather like blocked drains, it’s widely considered a great delicacy, and many also believe it to have aphrodisiac qualities. Its distinctive aroma wafts across the island from July to September,
when it’s in season. The strangest-looking fruit, however, is the rambutan (July–Sept), a delicious, lychee-like fruit enclosed in a bright-red skin that’s covered in tentacles. Again, it’s in season from July to September. Another prized Sri Lankan delicacy is the mangosteen (July–Sept), which looks a little like a purple tomato, with a rather hard shell-like skin which softens as the fruit ripens.
The delicate and delicious flesh tastes a bit like a grape with a slight citrus tang. Equally distinctive is the wood apple (or beli fruit), a round, apple-sized fruit covered in an indestructible greyish bark, inside which is a red pulpy flesh, rather bitter-tasting and full of seeds. It’s sometimes served with honey poured over it.
You might also come across custard apples: greenish, apple-sized fruits with knobbly exteriors and smooth, sweet white flesh; guavas, smooth, round yellow-green fruits, usually smaller than an apple and with slightly sour-tasting flesh around a central core of seeds; as well as rarities such as soursop, lovi-lovi and sapodilla. Finally, look out for the tiny gulsambilla (Aug–Oct), Sri Lanka’s strangest fruit – like a large, furry green seed enclosing a tiny, tartly flavoured kernel.
