Durian Dessert

I was taken to a lovely little KL shop which sells different kinds of durian. It is absolutely a brilliant fruit and love it. I loved this quote:

Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."

How about this one?

its odour is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.

So anyway, gym sock or not, my host took me to the shop. You can see from the banner on the top where you can see the different kinds of Durian fruit. We ordered 2 types.

Our shopkeeper suddenly went into an impassioned argument with one of the customers on the quality of one of the fruit.

so we took the opportunity to nip over to the table to sit down and I noticed this bonsai next to the table. It was a startling contrast to the entire ambience. While a bonsai plant has an evocative image of smallness, tiny bits, very delicate movements and all that, to be next to a stinky, spiky fruit stall  was amusing.

Then the shopkeeper came about with our durians and opened it up.

Here's a video showing how to open a durian. (The video is not mine), but the chap was wearing a thick glove (obviously to protect his hand from the sharp spikes and thorns) on his left hand and operating a curiously shaped knife on the other.

 

And here we go, we have the opened fruit. Can you see the green baskets on the left? those are the waste baskets, you just eat and spit.

And here is yours truly, stuffing his face with this lovely pulpy fruit.

We were not able to finish it, so the shopkeeper packed it up and gave it to us. The packages seriously stunk up the car and when I got back to the hotel, the door man bent down to open the car to let me out. And he RECOILED so hard. It was so funny. Here's another clip on how smelly it is.

Dont give a toss, it is brilliant, I just love durian, the south east Asian king of fruits.

Full slide show here.

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