The durian is in season again! I couldn’t be
happier. Mom bought me a basket full of durian. She said it's my birthday prezzie! Ok mom, accepted! I have to make it absolutely
clear that me…Norah are truly obsessed with this fruit? I'll make a 360 degree turn on this fruit king.
Talking about the taste, it depends on
whether you like the fruit or not. As far as just the sensation on your tongue
goes, it's sweet and creamy.
Have to admit, durian has unique smell, the smell's
is something else. Fragrant to me, stinky to others.
Apart of eating it fresh, you can also cook
it. Durian fruit is used to flavour a wide variety of sweet edibles such as
traditional Malay dessert such as ice kacang, dodol, lempuk and of course, moves with the time
with a touch of modern innovation, ice cream, milkshakes and now the latest
booming recipe is durian crepe. In Indonesia, Es durian (durian ice cream) is popular
desserts where you can find it sell at street side. In Sabah, red durian, they
fried with onions and chilli and served as a side dish. In Sumatra, the local
served Ikan brengkes, where the fish is cooked in a durian-based sauce. In
Bandung, they have one traditional Bollen pastry, earlier is filled with banana
and cheese but nowadays you can find Bollen durian.
Other popular product out of durian is Tempoyak.
It’s a fermented durian, usually made from lower quality durian that is
unsuitable for direct consumption. Can be eaten either cooked or uncooked, is
normally eaten with hot rice, and can also be used for making Sambal Tempoyak made
from the fermented durian fruit, coconut milk, and a chilli.
From my very own kitchen, I always cook this
dessert we called Serawa / Pulut Durian. Pulut Durian or ketan durian is
glutinous rice steamed with coconut milk and served with ripened durian also cooked
with brown sugar & coconut milk. I’ll share the recipe at very end of this
entry.
The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace
provides a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:
"A rich custard highly flavoured with
almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of
flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other
incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which
nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy."
Wallace cautions that "the smell of the
ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable"; more recent descriptions
by westerners can be more graphic. The English novelist Anthony Burgess
famously said that dining on durian is like eating vanilla custard in a
latrine. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:
"... its odour is best described as
pig-sh1t, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled
from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden
from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public
transportation in Southeast Asia."
There are so many types of durian which I can’t
recall all of them. I should be a durian seller then if I remembered all! Haha.
Ok, these are the popular one (in my perception)
D2: Thick, bronze- yellow, firm and of
excellent taste. Its deformed shape means only a few locules are present and
each has 1-2 arils.
D24: Locally known as Sultan. The flesh is
yellow, thick, firm, smooth, sweet and nutty with a slightly bitter taste.
D99: Known as Kop Kecil Very thick, creamy,
sweet, nutty, firm and golden-yellow flesh. The aroma is pleasant.
D123: Locally known as Chanee. The flesh is
creamy, firm, sweet and golden-yellow with a strong aroma.
D164: Locally known as Ang Bak (Red Flesh) The
pulp is moderately thick, orange yellow, fine textured, creamy sweet and of
excellent quality.
D175: Locally known as Udang Merah (Red
Prawn). The flesh is creamy sweet, thick, soft, fine and yellow.
I eat about twenty and tell my mum I've had
enough. For now J
Serawa
(Steam glutinous rice steamed with ripened durian)
For the Glutinous Rice:
1 cup raw sticky rice, soaked anywhere from
one to 5 hours, drained, and rinsed
1 cup coconut milk
½ teaspoon salt
Instructions:
Put the rice in a heatproof bowl and steam in
a steamer, over medium heat, for about 25 minutes. The rice should be cooked
through with no raw bits in the middle of the grains. Turn off the heat and let
the rice stay in the steamer, with the lid on, while you prepare the coconut
milk.
Mix the coconut milk and salt in the
microwave. Pour the coconut mixture on top of the rice and gently stir. (It may
look like your rice is drowned in coconut water, but the liquid will all be
absorbed.) Close the lid and steam it for another 15 minutes.
The coconut sticky rice is to be served at
room temperature along with the durian cream.
Durian Cream:
3 cup of coconut milk into a medium pot.
Add 150 grams of brown sugar/pal sugar
1 teaspoon of salt (the salt is very
important!)
Bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Gently
stir in the thawed durian pulp to the coconut milk mixture. You can see, some
of the pulp will meld into the sauce; some will remain chunky. Don’t panic
folk, that’s the way it should be. Taste for sweetness. The amount of sugar specified
above is just an estimate. You can modify based on your preference. If more
sugar is needed, add it now.
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| Photo credit to tiffinbiru |
Douse your sticky rice with durian crème and
enjoy your tea time while looking at the sunset. Legendary!
