Asian Gem - Durian

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.

Photo credit to tiffinbiru

Douse your sticky rice with durian crème and enjoy your tea time while looking at the sunset. Legendary!