Clusters of Durian - Note the difference in skin colour and shape. The ones in the foreground are the white-fleshed Durians while the ones in the background have an orange-flesh. They taste different to one another.

My deep and thorny love affair with Durians started when I was about 5 years old. That’s approximately a 20-year love affair that is still going strong. I was introduced to the Durian fruit by my family who have roots in the jungles and villages of Sabah, Borneo. As a young child, my father used to sleep in a small hut near my grandmother’s Durian trees with his cousins overnight to wait for the ripe Durians to fall to the ground. A dull thud on the jungle floor followed by the rustling of foliage usually indicates this.

Smaller in size and rounder in shape, the orange-fleshed Durian has a milder taste compared to the white-fleshed ones.

While growing up, I never got a chance to sleep under the Durian trees but I sure received generous helpings of the fruit whenever we visited granny in her village. My grandmother has countless Durian trees around her yard which always produces delicious Durians during the fruit season between July and November. However, I have seen Durians sold outside this season in different parts of Malaysia and Thailand.

The wonderful aroma of this white-fleshed Durian assaulted my senses in a beautiful way after it was split open. Mmmm...

A tropical fruit, the Durian is native to Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. In recent years, Thailand has become one of the biggest exporters of Durians in South East Asia even though the fruit is not native to their country. There are many variants of Durian – different sizes, flesh, colour, taste and texture. The three most common types of Durians are the yellow, white and orange-fleshed ones. I have tried a red-fleshed one in the past but this variant seems to be quite rare.

Otto is probably the only Mat Salleh I know who loves Durian! In fact, he loves Durian more than many of my Malaysian friends!

The Durian has a dense, solid and thorny outer-shell that splits open in sections (when you try hard enough with a cleaver or sharp tool). My theory is that the Durian protects itself with this intimidating ‘facade’ from preying animals and humans because its flesh tastes too good to be true and is worth the extra protection!

Unfortunately for the poor Durian, humans still managed to outsmart it. Years ago, I came across a fallen Durian in my granny’s yard with a dead squirrel wedged halfway into the fruit. The poor creature probably died trying to reach the tasty morsels of fruit within the thorns ala Get Rich or Die Tryin’!

The best way to crack open a Durian is with a heavy-based cleaver or Bucktool. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Always have lots of old newspapers handy to avoid destroying your furniture!

So what is the big fuss about the Durian? There are two sides to this: You either love it with a passion, or hate it with a vengeance. People who love Durians will go out of their way to get their hands on them. One example for me was driving out to the local fruit markets on a muddy gravel road in a tropical storm- thunder, lighting and all – to satisfy my cravings for Durian.

As for people who don’t, they find the smell sickly sweet and unbearable, and the taste utterly revolting,  “like rotting onions”- as I recall someone telling me years ago. Needless to say, I was more than slightly offended. But hey, to each of their own! Durians are actually banned in a few hotels and public transport in Malaysia and Singapore due to the strong odour from the fruit! How rude!

Otto clearly enjoying the Durians very much. We bought these at a roadside stall in Sipitang, Sabah.

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day on why Durians have such a wide reputation for being a smelly and disgusting fruit. We concluded that Durians probably get alot of bad press from all the widespread negativity and the idea that this fruit is gross becomes ingrained in people’s psyche and therefore puts them off enjoying it fully.

Perhaps the new tactic is to market this fruit in a more positive light so that people may change their minds about it. I grew up without the bad press and actually appreciated the fruit for what it was, just by eating and enjoying it the way nature intended.

A healthy chunk of fruit - washed down with a can of cold Tiger beer!

Out of the three most common types of Durian (white, yellow and orange), I like the yellow variety the most. My personal description of the flavour will have to be ‘A rich, creamy and concentrated bitter-sweet Vanilla custard’. The flesh of the Durian is very sweet and intense, and the creamy texture of the fruit simply melts in your mouth.

There are usually about 4 to 5 pods in a single Durian and each pod may contain up to 6 pieces of fruit that are attached together, and the seeds are encased within the flesh of the fruit. Durians are dense and  depending on size, a whole Durian can weigh between 0.5kg up to even 8kg! Here is an example of a 5.2kg Durian my folks’ bought at their local Durian stall:

A Durian weighing in at an almost whopping 5.2 kilos! The coffee mug should be a good indicator of size and scale.

A Durian stall at the Jalan Alor night food markets in Kuala Lumpur. The quality of the fruits here were excellent!

Durians are usually sold out of minivans and trucks on makeshift roadside stalls, night markets and local produce markets. The only times I have ever seen Durians sold indoors in a supermarket or fruit shop is when the fruit pieces have been packaged or they are sold wholly frozen (not recommended!). The price of Durians vary – smaller fruits can cost from around RM4 per kilo and the bigger, higher grade Durians can cost up to RM50 a kilo from my experience at a Durian stall on Jalan Alor in Kuala Lumpur.

Durian Cheesecake from Secret Recipe Cafe in Kota Kinabalu. Gotta love the broken Ching-lish!

Most Durian eaters will notice that after they eat the fruit with their fingers, the smell of the fruit lingers on for days on end! There are two tricks to this: Wash your hands under a running tap while rubbing your fingers with a stainless steel object such as a spoon. Or, my all-time favourite, using a Durian husk, rub your fingers in the white part of the husk while rinsing under running water. This method works like magic and removes the smell completely!

One thing I have found from eating too much Durian in one sitting is that my body temperature goes up and I feel quite feverish. This usually happens after going through about 5 whole Durians! The trick is to have some cold water or Coconut juice handy to counteract this heaty problem.

A slice of heaven - Durian cheesecake. I could not taste any cheese - it tasted like 100% fresh Durian concentrate!

Besides eaten fresh, Durians are made into various types of delectable sweets such as ice cream, candies, sweet porridge and cakes. I was at a Secret Recipe Cafe in Kota Kinabalu a while back and I saw that they had a Durian Cheesecake on offer. How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to try this?

I ordered a slice and to be honest I couldn’t taste the cheese but it tasted as though the entire cake was made from fresh Durian concentrate together with a crushed biscotti crust! It was so sensational, I bought an entire cake to bring to a family dinner that same week! The whole cake cost around RM40, which was pretty reasonable for what it was.

The Durian cheesecake I tried at Secret Recipe was so good that I bought an entire cake for a family get-together that same week.

As far as fruits go, Durians will have to be on the top of my favourites list. If you are ever around in Malaysia during the fruiting season, be sure to head down to the local food markets to sample the king of fruits for yourself and prepare to be amazed…

The crazy Japanese have come up with yet another brilliant – albeit expensive – solution. To solve all the above problems, the square watermelon was born. For watermelon farmers, this means easy packing for shipping purposes. How clever. These watermelons are grown in square glass containers from the vine, and as they grow they mould themselves into the square shape of the container. However, the square watermelon would probably only appeal to the hip and upmarket class of Japan as they aren’t cheap – starting from around $50 up to a whopping $160!

I was walking along a street in Hiroshima when I saw these watermelons displayed at a fruit shop. Over the years, I had heard stories about these watermelons but they always sounded like a silly but cute urban myth – until I saw them with my own eyes. What shocked me wasn’t the fact that I had actually seen square watermelons, but how much they cost!

The Betel Nut is from the Areca Palm, and is actually called an Areca Nut. I believe the leaves are called the ‘Betel’. But for some reason the name ‘Betel Nut’ just stuck with me while growing up. I remember the old village ladies always had a supply in their waist-pouches. They were terrifying creatures with yellow teeth – something which the Betel Nut does to you. As you chew, it excretes a bright-orange sap which, well, makes you look like the old village womenfolk – while giving you a head rush as though you’ve smoked 15 cigarettes in one sitting.

The Betel Nut ‘Kits’ are widely available at the local produce markets all over Sabah and this kit usually consists of the Betel leaves, a few grams of ground limestone chalk, tobacco and that other weird brown thing in the pictures which I cannot describe. These ingredients are then folded with the Betel leaf into a small parcel, placed under your gums and chewed slowly. Before you get excited, I can tell you now that the combination of ingredients does not taste great – a symphony of bitter musk and cat sweat will assault your senses in more ways than one.

The one thing that we all forgot to mention to Otto was that he actually needed to spit out the fluid remnants from the first chew – the result was a heavy head-rush, a sharp grip on my shoulder followed by left-footed stumbling on Otto’s part. The effect for first time users is quite similar to having lots of cigarettes in one hit – that ever-familiar head-rush a morning smoke gives you but tenfold. Needless to say, the oral contents were abruptly spat out in utter disgust followed by some incomprehensible muttering of sorts and cheers from the market crowd.

Spat out!

The funniest thing for me about this experience was that all the locals in the market dropped what they were doing and just stood and watched while Otto had a go at the Betel Nuts. Because Sipitang is quite a remote village, not many tourists actually venture out there. It must have been a field day for the locals to witness a Mat-Salleh trying Betel Nut at their local market. There was alot of giggling, wide-eyed staring and pure astonishment that day. Unfortunately for Otto, he suffered a bad headache after his experience and had to be carted home for a long nap in an air-conditioned room.