Sunday, August 3, 2008

The King

I just felt that I didn't get enough pics for the whole durian season thing in the previous post that mentioned it. So here's a whole motherload of it!

I'll start it off wit the Queen of Fruits. Mangosteen is quite rare in the open (super) market coz it's rarely packaged and sold commercially. Part of it is due to the fruit itself. Only a little flesh is found in the fruit and a big part of it is the seeds. So to extract the flesh is quite troublesome and not cost-effective. Most of the time (or the only time) when you eat the fruit is in it's natural packaging. The fleshy outer rind containing the pearly white insides. A good, rare one would have translucent flesh, the kampung ppl call it 玻璃山竹. It's extra sweet, extra 'crunchy' and nice. The normal pearly-white one is good enough as well.

Ze Queen. You noe 'mangosteen' is not heard of outside Asia coz the spell check is suggesting 'mangrove' to replace it. A check on dictionary.com confirms that mangosteen is indeed Malaysian. It originates from the word 'mangustan' (manggis + (h)utan), meaning 'forest mango'. Weird coz the mandarin name 山竹 suggests that its 'forest bamboo'.

Usually the mangosteen's in season when the durian's in season. That's why they are called the King and Queen of the fruits. They complement each other. The durian's 'heaty', while the mangosteen's 'cooling'. So the Yin and Yang balances each other out. Makes a good fruit feast.


Nothing much special about the rambutan. You can eat it in canned fruit cocktails and stuff. The taste difference is not much between the canned version and the ori. Only diff is the texture coz the ori one still has the crunchyness, wit the occasional hard thing stuck to the fruit coz you bitten off part of the rambutan seed. Sometimes you'll also find a worm or two to boost the protein content of the fruit. Sweet! (No you dun eat it if it's infested, you throw it away, if yer wondering)

Ze baby rambutan makes an exclusive appearance.

And here comes the KING!

This one is a different variant. Dunno the codename. Can see the diff in the spikes.

Kidney-shaped, heart-shaped, you name it. They say durians that have the weirdest shapes tastes the best. Preferably not round. Too perfect in this case.

Close up on the spikes. I wonder if it puntures itself if it continues to grow.

Ze insides.

This pic wasn't staged. My lil cousin bro reached for the durian juz a fraction of a sec before the camera managed to snap the pic. Juz proves the attraction of the KING!

Aunt's enjoyin it.

This one's on death roll.

My grandpa taking over as surgeon.

Can you feel the glow of the golden fruit? It's like opening a treasure chest.

The legendary good-tasting durian. The perfect shade of yellow of this fruit suggests that the taste and aroma is of the highest level. The name for it is 黄肉干包, meaning yellow flesh but wit a dry outside, I guess...

Ze ice-creamy texture of the fruit after the first bite. I was using my left arm to take this pic coz my right arm's holding this fruit. Steady huh?

A good fruit has an after taste that's sweet and aromatic. It circles in your mouth and the sweetness juz blows your head off.

Like almost every other posts that I posted pics taken in my hometown, here are some bugs!

This one has this unique pattern on it's back.

Can see the segmented legs and stuff.

It has these weird horns or something on it's head.

Ze back.

One more time.

I think they should make the durian seasons an official celebrated one. C'mon, the only seasons we have here is the fruit seasons and the moonsoon seasons. We dun have the 4 seasons like the northen countries have. Extra holiday?

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