I’ve lived a block from Chinatown for more than a year but, shamefully, I’ve never shopped there. Today I put that to rights, visiting a store on the corner of Elizabeth and Hester streets and picking ingredients for dinner. And I realised I should have been shopping there all year because IT IS SO CHEAP and SO DELICIOUS.

For dinner I picked some things I recognized and others that I didn’t, like Chinese aubergines (eggplants to you Americans) and a fuzzy squash (a furry courgette – zucchini to you Americans – that I had to de-hair before chopping), to throw into a stir fry.

And most importantly, I picked a dragon fruit – my new favorite thing. A tasty mixture between a kiwi and a pear, and so pretty, too.