Washing and storing sabzi so it survives a Lahore summer.

Wash now or wash later? It depends on the vegetable

The general rule is wash immediately before cooking, not before storing. Surface moisture is what mould and soft rot need to get started, and a wet vegetable in a closed fridge box is a small humid room. Bhindi is the clearest example anyone can test at home: wash it, store it damp, and it turns lissa and slippery in the pan. Wash it, dry it properly on a cloth, and it fries.

Leafy greens are the exception, and they are the exception because of how they arrive. Palak, methi, sarson and dhania come in with soil splashed up the stalks, and by the time you actually want them they are too limp to want to deal with. So wash them the day they come home, dry them properly, and store them dry. The drying is not optional; a bunch stored wet will be slime in two days.

The other thing not to do in advance is cut. A cut face is a wound that loses water and browns, so half a kaddu keeps far worse than a whole one. If you must store a cut half, press cling film flat against the cut face rather than loosely over the bowl.

How to actually wash a bunch of greens

Fill a large tub or degchi with cold water and plunge the leaves in, then swish them hard with your hands so the grit falls off. Now the important part: lift the leaves out of the water. Do not tip the tub into a colander, because that pours all the settled sand straight back over the leaves you just cleaned. Lift out, throw the water away, and repeat until the bottom of the tub is clean — usually two or three changes for palak and sarson after rain.

For gobhi, a soak in salted cold water for ten minutes brings out anything hiding in the florets. Dhania and podina need gentler handling: dunk and lift rather than rub, because the leaves blacken where they are crushed.

Drying matters as much as washing. Spread the leaves in a single layer on a dry cotton cloth or dupatta, blot the top with another cloth, then either roll the cloth loosely with the leaves inside or gather it into a bundle and swing it a few times outside so the water flies off. Kitchen towel works well for smaller quantities and for lining the box you store them in.

What should never go in the fridge?

Several things you probably refrigerate out of habit actively get worse below about ten degrees. Tamatar loses its aroma compounds in cold and the flesh goes mealy — keep them stem-side down on the counter, out of the sun, and only chill one that is over-ripe and about to go. Aloo turns sweet and browns unevenly in the pan when it is chilled. Pyaz softens and sprouts, lehsan sprouts and turns rubbery, and whole kaddu is happiest in a dark corner of the kitchen.

Kheera, baingan and bhindi all suffer chill injury in a cold fridge: skin pitting, sunken patches, and bhindi in particular blackens. A warmer drawer or a door shelf is where they belong. Kela goes black-skinned in the cold, and unripe aam never ripens properly afterwards.

• Counter, not fridge: aloo, pyaz, lehsan, whole kaddu, kela, unripe aam, and tamatar until they are fully ripe.
• Coolest part of the fridge: all leafy greens, matar, gobhi, gajar, muli, phalliyan, hara dhania and podina.
• Warmest part of the fridge, or a shaded counter: kheera, baingan, bhindi, karela, tinda, shimla mirch.
• Never store aloo and pyaz together. Onions give off moisture and gas that push potatoes into sprouting.

Which produce must not share a shelf?

Ripening fruit gives off ethylene, a gas that tells everything nearby to ripen too. That is genuinely useful when you want it — an aam in a paper bag with a kela ripens faster for exactly this reason — and it is destructive when you do not. Ethylene is why the palak in the crisper drawer yellows in three days when there is a ripening papita sitting next to it.

So separate them physically. The heavy producers are kela, aam, seb, papita, tarbooz, kharbooza, amrood and ripening tamatar. The things most damaged by that gas are all your leaves, plus kheera, gajar, muli, bhindi, gobhi and matar. Keep fruit in one place and sabzi in another, and if you only have one drawer, put the leaves in a closed box so they are breathing their own air.

Setting the fridge up for forty-five degree weather

A Lahore summer fridge is fighting a kitchen that may be pushing thirty-five degrees, and it loses that fight every time the door opens. Cold air needs to move, so do not pack the drawers solid: a jammed crisper develops warm pockets and the vegetables in the middle spoil first. Half-full beats full.

Line each box or drawer with a dry cotton cloth or a folded sheet of kitchen towel. Condensation collects on cold plastic and pools under the produce, and the cloth takes it up; change it the moment it feels damp. Vented boxes beat sealed ones, and a knotted shopping bag is the worst option there is — no air, every drop of moisture trapped inside.

Load-shedding is the other summer variable. Keep the door shut through an outage rather than checking on things, and freeze a couple of water bottles to stand in the vegetable drawer as a cold reserve. Never put a hot degchi straight in.

Rescue jobs for produce that is nearly gone

A limp bunch of dhania, palak or podina is usually thirsty rather than finished. Trim a sliver off the stem ends with a sharp knife, stand the bunch upright in a glass with an inch of water, put a loose bag over the leaves and refrigerate. Cut stems drink, and most bunches come back crisp within an hour or two. Change the water every couple of days and it will hold a week.

Bendy gajar and muli revive the same way, fully submerged in cold water for half an hour. Soft tamatar are past salad but right for a salan, where they were going to break down anyway. What cannot be rescued is anything smelling sour or growing a fuzz — take that out at once, because it spreads to whatever it is touching.