The King of Fruit?

Last Friday we got our consignment of Durian from Thailand, considered by many as the "King of Fruits"! Durio kutejensis fruits, is also known as durian merah.



The durian is the fruit of trees of the genus Durio belonging to the Malvaceae, a large family which includes hibiscus, okra, cotton, mallows and linden trees. The fruit is largish, has a unique odour, and a thorn-covered husk, much like the jackfruit, which, however, is considerably larger.

The fruit can grow up to 30 cm long and 15 cm in diameter, and weighs between one to three kilograms. Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk can be green to brown. Its flesh is pale-yellow to red.

The hard outer husk is covered with sharp, prickly thorns. The edible custard-like flesh emits the strong, distinctive odour, which is overpowering and offensive.

The taste of the flesh has been described as nutty and sweet.



Although the fruit arrived very well packed in a plastic container and over-wrapped with plastic film, the extremely strong smell came through the packaging. We had to keep it in our cold front room so that whole house would not start stinking.

We were not able to eat it till today, as it has been quite cold and cloudy. We had decided that we would eat it outdoors when a warm sunny day arrived!

When we opened the plastic container, we found the smell to be what we in Oulu call the "Oulu Odour". This is the traditional stink to high heaven that pervades our city because of the emission from the pulp factory.

However, we could not get the smell once we consumed the fruit.

The fruit was not quite yellow as was promised, but was more whitish. It had a custard like consistency and although I thought it fairly sweet, Annikki did not find it sweet at all and compared the taste to a mixture of onion and some other mushy vegetables.

Bot hof us were quite disappointed with the taste as it is nowhere near the beautiful taste of a ripe jackfruit, a great pulpy mango, or even a really nice papaya.

It was certainly not, in our opinion, the "King of Fruits".



After dinner I felt like having a fruit.

We had a beautifully carved watermelon which had been given by Pailin and Unnop as a present to Annikki for Mother's Day.

Maybe you noted the blue vase in the picture with a rose on top of what appears to be ice in the vase. This is something that Annikki has recently discovered.

She took some ordinary clear plastic film, crumpled it and stuffed it into a vase. When she poured water into the vase, the plastic looked like it was crushed ice.

A wonderful effect!

Wonder who is the creative plastics consultant - Annikki or me! :-)