Queer Gear

In greengrocers’ language, ‘queer gear’ denotes exotic fruit and vegetables, the kind we get from the tropics and the Mediterranean, usually in the autumn and winter. From then until early in the New Year, when the first of the citrus fruit reaches us from Seville and Sicily, we have a wealth of exotica from which to choose: pomegranates, quinces, persimmons, prickly pears, custard apples, as well as an array of unusual vegetables.