Durian - King of Fruit

by Josephine and Joanne Kua

Most tourists that have visited Malaysia before can tell you their personal experiences with the 'king of fruits', the durian. At first sight the durian looks intimidating, all green in colour covered with sharp thorns. Surely one must have the opinion that the flesh inside would tastes heavenly as it is quite a challenge for amateurs to pry open the hard and thorny shell (Ouch!). From the first taste, you will either love it or hate it for the rest of your life because some may find the strong smell repulsive (Our mom's former American teacher says it smells like kerosene). Nevertheless it smells just fine to us Malaysians.

Durian trees are usually planted in orchards. The interesting part is the season when the fruits ripen. A good durian is a durian that ripens and fall of from its tree. This process usually happen at night.The orchard owner or a hired hand would wait in a makeshift shack in the orchard, patiently enduring mosquito bites and with their ears peeled for 'Thump!' noises. The moment they hear a 'thump' they will rush out aided with flashlights into the pitch black darkness in search for the durian. There's always the danger that some freeloading 'durian rustlers' would swipe it and start their own durian business in a local 'pasar malam' (night market) and nobody would be the wiser. One has to be careful running around the orchard like that. You'll never know when another durian might fall and strike you square on the head (most likely to kick the bucket) or end up kicking the durian you're looking for.

Opening the durian requires some skill as well as experience. When our dad and mom we're still amateurs they had some pretty rough time with durians. After purchasing a few durians from the 'pasar malam', they selected one and proceeded to open it using a 'parang' (a type of chopper). Little did they know that the particular durian that they had picked was still unripe.

Unripe durians are very stubborn and would not open that easily (or at all). So, poor ol' mom and dad took turns hacking the durian open until both of them were poofed out but with no avail.Nosiree, mindless hacking would do you no good.That brings us to a question, "If you throw an unripe durian out of a ten storey building, will it crack open?". Chances are - nope. Now that they are much more experienced, opening durians is a breeze.

The creamy yellow flesh of the durian is best eaten, in our opinion, with 'pulut' (steamed glutinous rice) and 'santan' (fresh coconut milk). Though most people prefer to eat the sweet flesh just as it is. A word of warning though, durians are very heaty. Eat way too much and you'll most probably to end up with a fever. However this doesn't deter us Malaysians from eating as much as we want. So why don't you go ahead and try it.

You can reach Josephine and Joanne at: sofin@pl.jaring.my

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