Tasty, nutritious exotic fruits you should be eating

Buying one exotic fruit you've never tried each week will help you diversify your diet and get more antioxidants. It could be something as relatively common as a mango, or as unusual as a cherimoya. Here are some tips on some exotic fruits and how to enjoy them.

Also called a Chinese salad or apple pear, this firm pear is meant to be eaten immediately when it's hard. It's sweet, crunchy and amazingly juicy.

• Also called a custard apple, this large tropical fruit tastes like a combination of pineapple, papaya and banana.
• Purchase fruit that's firm, heavy for its size and without skin blemishes or brown splotches.
• Let it soften at room temperature, then refrigerate it, wrapped, for up to four days.
• To serve, cut it in half, remove the seeds and spoon the fruit from the shell.

• Sweet and fragrant with bright pink, white, yellow or red flesh.
• Buy when it is just soft enough to press, and refrigerate it for up to a week in a plastic or paper bag.
• To use, cut in half and scoop out the flesh for salads, or peel and slice. Try cooking and puréeing slightly underripe guava as a sauce for meat or fish.

• This fruit didn't take off until its name was changed from Chinese gooseberry to kiwi.
• Now it's one of the most popular of the exotic fruits.
• With a flavour that's a cross between strawberries and melon, kiwis are ready to eat when they're slightly soft to the touch.
• Peel and chop, or cut in half and scoop out the flesh with a grapefruit spoon.

• Once, lychee trees were found only in southern China, but the popularity of this tropical fruit has caused its spread.
• The lychee fruit is about four centimetres (two inches) in size, oval, with a bumpy red skin.
• Peel off the inedible skin and you get a white, translucent flesh similar to a grape, but sweeter, surrounding a cherry-like pit.
• Eat them like large grapes, one after another.
• They're available for only a few months of the year, but buy a bag in spring and you'll discover why Asian people call lychees the king of fruits.

• One of the most commonly eaten fruits, along with bananas, the mango is often included in fruit salads, and is used to add flavour to a variety of fish.
• The flavour is a combination of peach and pineapple, but spicier and more fragrant (it is sometimes called the tropical peach).