There were a couple fruits that I had on my list based on memories of childhood or stories from relatives, but others were just simply picked up at the market based on the fact that I'd never seen them before.
It actually took me awhile to find some of the stuff (especially in Singapore) because many of the grocery stores have a Western influence on them and sell more fruit that I wouldn't think of as being really exotic.
My bounty from Singapore:
Clockwise from bottom right:Malay apple - I'd never seen nor heard of this fruit before. I actually thought that it was a vegetable when I first saw it...for some reason I thought it was a pepper. It was pretty tasty. Not much flavour, but quite watery. A little bit like a good Japanese pear. Taste-wise, like I said, not much flavour...maybe a little bit pear-ish? Apple-ish? I could see it being really refreshing on a hot day.
Rambutan - I'd eaten these before and remembered liking them, although not remembering what they taste like. I've come to think that a lot of fruit from the area have similar flavors. The ones that I'd picked (I also don't know how to pick these things) weren't the best. I think it was a little early in the season anyway. As soon as a opened them, I knew...I remembered that if the skin from the seed sticks to the fleshy part, it's not the best. To me, they fall into the "lychee flavour" category. Just like lychees, you pull off the funky looking skin and have the translucent fleshy bit inside that you eat. Inside the fleshy part is a seed. I like these fruit.
Passion fruit - I suppose that this isn't the most exotic fruit of the bunch. There's lots of passion fruit juice on the market, and I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the taste of passion fruit stuff, but I still wanted to try the fruit just in case the fruit was better than the flavour (just like with blueberries, in my opinion). I'd actually eaten half of a passion fruit once before in Kenya, but it was extremely sour. Anyway, this one was much better. At the market, I wasn't really sure how to pick a good one, so the vendor was really nice and told me to select a wrinkly looking one (I think he was a little assumed by the fact that I was picking up just one of all of these random fruits and asking him was each of them were called - I don't really Chinese very well). Luckily, he didn't scam me (the thought did cross my mind) and I ended up with a really yummy fruit. It is true, the fruit tastes better than the juice. It's pretty much the same, but I still like the fruit better. A friend didn't want to eat it as he thought it looked like "snot". Great.
Dragonfruit - I'd seen lots of these at the market in different places, but I think this was the first time that I'd ever eaten one. I knew that
dragonfruit were white on the inside with black poppyseed looking specs, but I never knew that a vibrant magenta version existed too. How fun! It tasted, well, kinda boring. Starchy. I don't know if I got a dunce, but I wasn't too excited by it. A friend said that they'd eaten better, but I can't remember what they said was better about it. I'm willing to give it another try, but so far, I think it looks more exciting than it tastes.Custard apple - another fruit that I'd never seen before, it was kind of mushy on the outside, and I would soon find out, super duper ripe! A little bit of searching on the internet makes me unsure of which species of custard apple/sugar apple/whatever I ate, but all I know is that it was damn good. My favorite fruit that I tried by far. I had no idea what to expect once cutting open this fruit and I'd happened to pick one of the smaller ones at the market just in case I didn't like it. This one was
probably about 20cm in length. To eat this fruit, you just take each of those fleshy bits, shove 'em into your mouth and spit out the black seed inside. I don't think I'd eaten/seen a fruit with a similar composition like this one before (I would come to find out that there's a whole bunch that are similar - durian, soursop, jackfruit...). As mentioned before, I got lucky and had picked a ripe one (so I felt like I was just smushing the pieces together when trying to pick out the pieces of flesh and making a mess out of it), it was really sweet and tasted like mango (in my opinion). It was soooooooo good. When walking in Chinatown last week, I found a shop that sells a smaller species of them at a pretty exorbitant price, but I'm sure I'll suck it up one time to see if it tastes as good as I remember. I also tried a couple of pieces of soursop, via a drink. The juice was quite tasty, although I wouldn't be surprised if they'd put something in it to make it sweeter. It wasn't really sour per se, but had a flavour that I can't quite place. They suck a couple pieces of the fruit in the juice for good measure and it looked to be white in colour and sort of spongy-ish. It was okay, but I would like to try it in its natural state at some point.
In Kuala Lumpur, I got my hands on a couple more fruit:
Jackfruit - Seeing the size of these suckers, I didn't want to buy a whole one, but luckily, vendors were selling packages of a couple packages. This was the first fruit that I tried that I really didn't like. It had a dry quality and tasted like - I don't know - bad. It left a weird filmy texture on my mouth. It wasn't sweet, nor bitter. It wasn't a sticky texture, but I would describe the flavour as sticky (if that makes any sense). It also had a seed inside each of the fleshy units, and now I have absolutely no intention of opening up that can of jackfruit that's been sitting in my parent's pantry from many many years.
Mangosteen - I'd also eaten these before and liked them as well. I received a warning that the rind would stain clothing, so I was careful, but luckily, my black wardrobe is stain proof. Anyway, another tidbit of information that I got was that the number of "petals" on the "flower" on the bottom of the fruit would be equal to the number of fleshy units on the inside of the fruit. We picked two different petal-numbered fruits to see if this theory was true. Photo evidence to show, my gosh, it's true! How fun.
Just like a lot of these exotic fruits, each of the flesh units has a seed inside of it. the consistency of the flesh is a little bit more pulpy than a lychee (which I would define as been pretty smooth and consistent). I don't really know how to describe the flavour of a mangosteen. It can be sweet or sour (depending how good they are - I don't really know how to pick these either, but I know that the ones I picked were tasty!). I guess the taste is unique and not really like anything else that I would assume most people have eaten before - why is my mind racing about educational theories, Vygotsky, Piaget, associations and past experiences?
I also found some salak being sold in a grocery store, but there were probably 15-20 in a package and I wasn't quite ready to get that many. Why can't they just sell them in individual units? Darn it - I wanted to try this one too.
In Taipei, I didn't see anything else that I hadn't seen before. I did have the chance to try some attap fruit in a dessert. It was like eating a stiffer version of jello. The flesh was a sort of white-ish, translucent and I couldn't distinguish it's taste from the sweet dessert that it was in. I liked it, but I don't know if that was the sweet syrup that they'd added to the dessert or the attap itself. Again, I can't really place the taste. It didn't really have a taste to it, it was more about the texture for me. Wow - it's really hard to describe stuff that's unique.
In Tainan, I knew the end of my trip was near and that I had limited time to try the remaining fruits on my list (I was starting to see repeats of all the other "new" fruits that I tried...nothing looked exotic anymore so I had nothing new to try).
It had been on my list from the very beginning, but I had never found the right moment for it (to be explained in a future post about Singapore) and of course, I was always a little scared aout the prospect of eating...durian.
I'd seen durian everywhere, but it took me awhile to find a place that just sold a couple pieces in a package. Finally, I found a place and some other people who were willing to eat some with me and the stink began. It was brutal. It got worse and worse and so bad that I actually started to feel sick and get a headache. Still, I wanted to try eating it (I think I tried it when I was younger, but I have no idea what the result was. I know that I've seen it in my parents house before and the smell is definitely familiar, but I had no recollection about the taste). By golly, the taste really is completely different from the smell. The texture weirded me out completely. It's really mushy. Creamy. I can understand how people say that it would be better to eat after it's been in the freezer. Just like ice cream. The taste, well, the pieces that we got ended up being a little too ripe, and to me, it tasted like caramel. No joke. Unfrotunately, due to the over-ripeness, I got a little kick of you weird alcohol/liqueur taste (at least that's what I associate with the taste) which turned me off. I could only eat a piece the size of toonie as the flavour was overpowering. My brain was thoroughly confused. First of all, the texture didn't match the taste (in my opinion) and secondly, the taste didn't match the smell. I also had to stop eating, not because the taste was bad, but as I was eating, the smell of what was in my mouth made me sick. It was a horribly weird feeling. I can't tell you how many times I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth out that night. The smell lingered (but not the taste - although I did have that gross filmy feeling on my tongue) and my head hurt even as I was trying to fall asleep. So, I'm not the biggest fan of durian, but it wasn't horrible. If there was some way to get rid of the smell, well, that would make things a lot easier. I'd like to try a piece out of the freezer, but again, that smell thing. There's got to be some kind of solution. I always thought that taste and smell were linked. Other than the sour, bitter, sweet, etc sensations, I thoughts that what we "taste" is actually what we smell. So if that's true, what's up with durian?
I guess the other fruits that I ate that are kinda exotic are mango and guava.
I do have to say that the Taiwanese species of mango really are superior to any other mango that I've had. I love mango, and I couldn't really believe that one mango would be better than another, but it's true. Those smaller, green skinned mangos are amazing! They are sweeter and tastier...I only realized it after I'd been eating the better ones for a couple days think that they were pretty good, but not really understanding what the big fuss was about, until I ate the larger red/yellow skinned ones and found out that while they're still tasty, they just don't quite compare.
I'm not the biggest fan of guava, but I eat 'em. That's all I have to say about that.
Oh yeah, I ate a couple lychees as well, but luckily, they're pretty normal in Toronto, so I wasn't too excited by them. Apparently I was there just as the season was getting started, but apparently they get really really good, so I would be interested to taste just how good they get. Come to think of it, they said the same thing about the mangoes. Gosh, if those little green mangoes taste even better during peak season? Amazing.
Hmmmm - I didn't eat any persimmons on my trip. Didn't really see many though.
The one fruit that I did not even bother going near was the papaya. I've had many opportunities to smell and eat papaya in my lifetime and each time ended up with bad results. The smell makes me sick. Literally. There was no way that I was going to give in on this one becasue I was pretty convinced that if through all of these years of having access to the fruit and still not being able to tolerate it, trying it in a different country probably wouldn't make any difference. I am proud to say that I did eat one tiny piece of one in the fruit salad on the plane. It wasn't the best quality papaya that I've had, which actually worked out better for me because the flavour wasn't as strong. I think I took a little nibble on the cube, felt pretty good about the fact that I didn't immediately throw up, and then moved onto my dessert. I still didn't like the flavour, but I managed to take a nibble. That's success in my books.
Anyway, that's my fruit tales. It was a lot of fun seeing and tasting so many different things. The clear favorites for me were the custard apple and mangosteen. I know that I pretty much like anything in lychee flavour category, so lychee, rambutan...it's all good as well. And mangoes...always a special place in my heart for those.
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