Recently I’ve come across two fruits that I’ve never seen or heard of before. The first, a tiny mandarin orange called a kishu, about the size of a golf ball. That’s it in the photo next to a Satsuma for scale. This tiny fruit was incredible—the easy-to-peel skin revealed the plumpest, juiciest, seedless sections with massive sweet-tart flavor. I don’t know where you can buy these (or if you can at all); my husband’s cousin, a fruit researcher at a nearby university, brought some from work. My kids loved them, and so did I—they were a delightful surprise.

The second fruit is one I found on an excursion to the incredible Buford Highway Farmers’ Market just outside of Atlanta. This huge store is more insanely great international market than farmers’ market—with an enormous produce section, aisles and aisles of products from every cuisine you can think of, and no fewer than three kinds of house-made chicharrones. There I found the Mexican mamey fruit, which looked something like an emu egg meets a withered avocado. A quick Internet search told me the fruit’s flesh tastes like a combination of sweet potato, pumpkin, and maraschino cherries (which it does) and that it’s often used in smoothies (which I tried and was delicious). (See it opened up in the last picture.)

I love discovering new (to me) ingredients like these—it’s so fun to try and taste unfamiliar foods. What are some of the coolest food finds you’ve come across?