Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Stinky Fruit Smells Like Feet - Hereby Dubbed "Spike"

My mother and I have a passion for shopping in strange markets and experiencing odd things. There is an "Asian" market near our house, for lack of a better description, that we like to get our produce from. Besides just shopping for produce, this store is particularly fun to just wander around in just to look at things. But it makes eating at Chinese restaurants a debatable experience...

In this particular market they have huge, over-crowded fish tanks with huge fish (alive) piled on top of each other. Eating it must be like eating pure anxiety. The "butcher" reaches in with his net, and all the fish scramble to the bottom to get away. Then you can watch him chop the head off, drain the blood and gut it. Poor fish. And I like seafood....

Anyway, we don't go there for the fish. Last time we were there we came across this strange vegetable/fruit thing that we'd never seen before. We decided to buy one just for the experience. According to the label, the name of the thing is "Monthong Durian," or something like that.






After checking my mom's trusty dictionary, she found that this particular fruit is known to have a fetid smell, yet a creamy and yummy taste (paraphrasing). It was the "fetid smell" description that made us super-eager to open it. We are weird, it's true. Not knowing whether it had a pit or what the proper procedure for opening said fruit was, we hacked at it from various different angles with no success. We finally decided it was frozen and perhaps we should let it thaw.

After allowing it to thaw, I let me mother have the honor of getting the thing open. According to her, it smelled like (jack)ass. I kinda thought it smelled like a cross between a carob tree in the fall and someone's dirty socks. We couldn't figure out how to eat it and eventually ended up throwing it away.

I am inspired to find out how this fruit is of use to mankind, make a video teaching the skill of getting it open and serving it, and posting it online. Unless someone has beat me to it... :)

5 comments:

  1. Start here: http://www.bing.com/search?q=durian+video&src=IE-SearchBox

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  2. This is the most instructive on opening it: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1111422/open_a_durian_with_hand/

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  3. And here are a wealth of videos re the durian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUm0kssk_V4

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  4. Looks like we should have saved it for the kitties. Apparently they have a fondness for it. Stands to reason considering how much they like sniffing each other in the behind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Y0vfFvHgM&feature=related

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  5. Brave girl. I'm not sure it is Chinese. I seem to recall it was from Thailand or Borneo. In any event, it is supposed to be an aphrodisiac. There is an old Asian saying that in the durian-picking season, "When the durians come down, the sarongs go up." However, I still agree it has no purpose.

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