Amongst the many fruits on offer, some of the best are the familiar favourites: bananas, grapefruits and oranges all tasting more sweet, juicy and flavoursome than any of our imported equivalents. Juices made from citrus fruits, and fresh-baked banana breads are available everywhere. More exotic fruits include the milky white pulp of the soursop , from which a breakfast juice is made; the carambola or star fruit , which is de-seeded and then eaten whole or sliced in salads or as a garnish for drinks and meat dishes; guava - often used to make breakfast jelly - and coconuts , which produce milk when ripe and a refreshing coconut-flavoured water when green.

Vegetables tend to be versatile and filling, like the yucca, breadfruit or callalloo - a spinach-type vegetable in Jamaica, where it is used like turnip or greens, and a leek-like plant in the Eastern Caribbean, also known as dasheen and often used to thicken soup. Plantains , sweet when ripe and mealy when green, are prepared as a side dish to rice and beans or fried and made into chips, a delicious accompaniment to a local beer or a cocktail at sunset. Also popular is christophene , whose pale green and crisp flesh is much used in Chinese, Latin American and West Indian cooking; calabaza , a generic term for West Indian pumpkins, which are often similar in texture to butternut squash; cassava , a root vegetable that comes in bitter and sweet forms; and okra , a finger-shaped vegetable that is often added to soups and stews.