pomelo

on new tastes

In the original spirit of savour, this is a note on one of life’s delicious things. It also happens to be in season now! Here’s a very good noodle recipe featuring it.

It was the biggest supermarket we’d encountered so far, big enough for the pair of us to split up and with it the shopping list. We were bumping into nap time, and while the concept had frayed at the edges over the weeks we’d been in Italy, we nevertheless appreciated a good 90 minutes of reading or scenery-staring or mindless scrolling while the baby was asleep. We’d come to buy the same things: some cured meat, some hard cheese, some pasta, a bunch of herbs, some tomatoes, some bread. And so I didn’t entirely make sense of the waxy, near-round ball that tumbled off the conveyor belt and into the bagging area, where the baby was sat.

“Pomelo!” M said, glee painted across his face. I shrugged, squeezed it into one of the four tote bags we were using to carry everything, made sure the baby didn’t fall backwards.

In the end, we didn’t eat it while we were in Umbria. The little kitchenette in the place was more style than substance; I found myself using forks to do most things, although it’s noticeable that even the worst-equipped holiday home kitchens in Italy have far greater pasta pans than most British homes, including my own. Instead, we drove the pomelo over the border to Tuscany, where we ended up in Arezzo at the last minute. We unpacked it from the hire car and dropped the hire car off and walked back to the tiny, weirdly lit AirBnB with the generous host and there, on that sparkling, just-cold afternoon in October, decided not to explore the city after all but sit on the bed and the balcony and eat pomelo.

I am privileged to say that it is rare these days that I encounter an entire foodstuff for the first time. But I’ve never eaten pomelo. Wouldn’t know what to do with it. M, though, was determined. He found a little serrated butter knife and started hacking away at the thick, yellow flesh on a sideboard. I watched the baby as his father spent a short eternity removing the dense pink cloud of pith from the thing. It piled up and the fruit got smaller until just tight pearls of pink flesh appeared. We took it onto the balcony where the sun was strong, and M pulled out a segment for me.

The heft of it surprised me. Tougher and denser than I realised, unyielding. I was fascinated by its make up, all these tiny little beads of well-wrapped juice in a transparent casing the colour of sunsets and coral. I picked them apart, squeezed them between my fingers, pushed them between my lips and thought about what it is to eat flowers. I held some up to the baby’s mouth, a single piece on a fingertip. New for him, new for me. How strange, how beautiful.

The light faded on the balcony. We’d lost track of the time, as happens on days when you drive, when you end up somewhere you’d not anticipated. We were tired; the baby had not been sleeping well, we’d all been keeping slightly too close quarters for a while. Later, after C had fallen asleep, M and I took turns in walking around Arezzo for a bit of space and sanity. How smartly dressed everyone was, I thought. I was struck with the consciousness of doing a new, everyday, big nothingy thing. Thirty-five years and only now eating an entire new fruit.

When we came home, to England, we were plunged into the chill and bluster of autumn, as if we went away for a month and missed a whole season. C and I fell into a new routine, where we’d go to the supermarket on Mondays. After feeling so expansive life had shrunk to something almost claustrophobically domestic, of walks to the park and trips to the post office. But we also moved into pomelo season. Now I see them when I reach for the bananas I buy every week. And every week I think, should we get one?