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How well do you know your fruit anatomy? Pips? Pith? Peel? But how about vesicles? These are the small teardrop-shaped sacs of juice within a citrus fruit. In oranges or lemons, they’re fragile things, but in a pomelo, they’re sturdier than a Nokia 3310, held in a thicker capsule, meaning that when you bite into one, they burst pleasingly in the mouth. It is one of the pomelo’s many virtues, and it makes the fruit an ideal companion for sharp, seafood-forward salads.
I’m embarrassed to admit that until recently, I had assumed a pomelo was some kind of lemon-melon hybrid – based entirely on the name sounding like one. It is, in fact, one of a handful of ancient citrus fruits from which all others are descended: a bowling-ball-sized leviathan that dwarfs most of its citrus relatives and is, among other accolades, the biological father of the grapefruit. Its flavour is mild and floral, entirely without the face-contorting sourness of its offspring.
The first time I ate one was on a river cruise down the Mekong last January – assembled in the manner of many Laotian dishes: sour, bitter, kicking with shrimp paste, toasted rice powder, lime and chilli. I was completely won over.
Preparing a pomelo can seem intimidating, but if, like me, you derive calm from the careful preparation of fruit or vegetables with your hands, then cancel your next CBT session, buy a pomelo and get peeling. The skin is very thick and must be cut away with a knife to reveal a dense, felt-like pith beneath, which you peel back by hand to expose the individual segments. Use your fingers to pull the segments from the tough membrane, and you’ve got pomelo ready to eat.
This recipe follows the same principle as Thai som tam, with pomelo standing in for raw papaya. Add fat, juicy prawns, fresh herbs, and rice paper shards, fried until they blister and puff, and you have the ideal low-effort summer lunch when you don’t want to touch the hob. On sourcing: pomelos turn up reliably in Lidl and most large supermarkets nowadays (in southeast London at least). If you can’t find one, an unripe green mango cut into matchsticks makes an excellent stand-in.
