RecipeMuncher

There is little danger of being unable to get your ‘five-a-day’ in Thailand. Indeed, the ubiquitous street vendors sell so many varieties of fruit it is hard to stop yourself from going beyond the magic number. Pineapples cut into intricate corkscrews, slithers of green mangoes, chilled wedges of watermelon, bags of sweet jackfruit, tangerines with an unfamiliar green skin, deep purple mangosteens, alien-like spiky lychees, freshly cut coconuts with luridly coloured straws peeping from the top and bunches of longan berries, which look disturbingly like potatoes, are all available in huge quantities for no more than a few baht.
Chief among these exotic fruits, though, is the infamous durian, one of South East Asia’s most well known delicacies and something any bold food adventurer simply has to try. Durian look like the pre-historic eggs of an animal dreamed up by HG Wells but it is the smell that makes this particular fruit so notorious.

Put in the simplest language possible,…

It’s durian season here in Penang, Malaysia and there are durian stalls selling this thorny fruit every corner you turn.

While a lot of people consider the smell of durian as “stinky” and “repulsive”–so much so that they are banned in hotel rooms in Malaysia!–I love this king of fruits. (For those who enjoy durian, we think of the smell as “aromatic.”) Some of the best durians in Malaysia come from the durian orchards in Balik Pulau, Penang, which is on the less-developed side of the island of Penang.

Growing up, my family–especially when my uncle and his family come to visit us in Penang–would drive all the way up to Balik Pulau, into the durian orchards in search of the freshest and just-drop-off-the-tree durians. At the durian orchards, we would sample various kinds of durian an…