Delight — The perfect guava

There are very few things I relish more than a perfect sample of a fruit of my choice. Over the last couple of years, patronising the Nature Soul Shop, the finest organic grocery and produce retailers one could ever find, and befriending its proprietors, the ever-helpful and knowledgable Arjun Sahni and his family has been a godsend for the fruit connoisseur in me.

I grew up around guava trees, it was the only kind of tree I could easily climb. The pink, soft guavas from Allahabad were considered among the finest, but I was partial to the greener, harder, more bitter variant that grows more easily across the sub-continent. In the last few years, I have also discovered the hybrid Thai variety, very large in size and delightful in crunch but so tepid in its flavor profile that a friend likened it to a cucumber.

Guavas, for me, have always been an exercise in tradeoffs. If you want the beautiful pink hue, go for the Allahabad variety; if you want the flavor tinged with the slightest bitterness that makes a guava delightful, go for the more common green variety; and if you want the perfect crunch, the Thai variant is your friend. But, you cannot get the best of all worlds in one guava

This winter, Arjun introduced me to the best guava variety I have ever had and changed my world. These pink guavas from the Nasik/Solapur region are very ordinary looking on the outside, but have the most beautiful link pink centre. The crunch is just right combining a harder outside with a softer core, and the flavor profile is simply perfect — mildy sweet with tinge of bitterness. Arjun tells me it is available only for a month of so in the winter, so they have been part of our grocery purchase every week since December.