Our friends Karim and Laura, who stayed with us in Bali, are adventurous travelers. One of the things that Karim likes to search for is unusual, tropical fruit. Salak, or snake fruit, was a great find of his. Indigenous to Indonesia and Malaysia, it has reddish-brown scales that make it look like snake skin. Pretty scary looking. But when you peel off the skin, you'll find three white lobes resembling large garlic cloves and a round, black pit. The taste is actually pretty good--crisp and juicy with a sweet-tart taste, sort of like a lime.
Now here is the durian, one of the angriest looking fruits around. Also, the most controversial. Considered the king of all fruits in SE Asia, you either love or hate them. Karim, who loves them, was on the hunt for the Indonesian version. It has bigger and longer spikes than the one in this picture. I had forgotten that my partner had not tried this fruit before. After dinner, we all gathered around to marvel and open this thing, but my partner had to flee the table, because its smell, similar to rotting socks, had overwhelmed him. It's too bad he didn't notice that the Indonesian durian actually has some additional fruity notes to it. With a bit of coaxing and much taunting, he did come back to try the sweet, custardy insides. He wasn't completely sold on it, but hey, Karim and I loved it.
Photo credits to giftrap.com and mission-base.com
7 comments:
I've never had durian fruit itself but I've tried durian-flavored ice cream. The smell truly is a wretched. My friend whose olfactory sense doesn't function really likes the stuff though. Glad to see you're back to the yoga.
Hi Armani
I've never tried durian, but had heard of its characteristics, learning from Tim Tyler, an interesting scientist in the UK, who educated me on it through sharing wikepedia articles and other sites.
Cheers,
Arturo
custardy
It was good to see you yesterday! We need to find some durian ice cream for Carl.
I am also very adventurous with my fruit, I try everything. I had durian recently for the first time and did not like it much. Because I bought this huge monstrous fruit, I felt sorry to just throw it away, so I froze it in small portions. After a while, I did not have any fruit in the house, and decided to give it another try. I loved it frozen. May be freezing makes any fruit better?
hey, folks: thanks for your comments! glad to see so many adventurous palates. last weekend, i went to uwajimaya (a pan-asian supermarket) and saw a sign that the durian season will start up again soon.
durian milkshakes for all! :)
Blech! Please warn us before you bring them to the yoga studio. Maybe those of us that don't appreciate the custardy texture will go to pilates or Bikram's that day.
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