Fruit of the Week: Durian

Name: Durian

Brand: no stickers, definitely an import

Place of Purchase: Jung's Oriental Food Store, 1140 E 9th St, Des Moines, IA

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Country/Region of Origin: probably Thailand or Vietnam

Price in Iowa: One small fruit cost me $20, but you still get a lot of fruit for that.

Description: It looks like a yellow-green football with spines. Inside, there is a creamy yellow, fibrous meat surrounding several large brown seeds.

Flavor: Very complex. The odor adds a sulfurous flavor similar to onion or garlic. The meat itself tastes like vanilla/almond custard. It is exquisitely sweet and creamy. There is also a meaty flavor underneath the sweetness.

Aroma: it depends on the fruit, but the riper it is the stinkier it is. It ranges from a hint of onion, to bad armpit body-odor, to refried rancid rat carcass with a gym sock garnish. Luckily, if you buy your fruit in the US it is typically frozen or chilled for shipping. This tends to kill much of the stronger aroma.

Texture: A combination of the fibrous aspects of squash mixed with creamy, pudding-like flesh in between the fibers.

Mouth-feel: Pudding, mousse, custard. So long as it's fresh. An older fruit will lose some of its moisture, and the flesh will lose its creaminess.

Notes: Durian is a love-it-or-leave-it fruit. Many people from Southeast Asia LOVE durian. In Asia, it is the best fruit you can get. They call it the King Fruit. Folks from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam grew up with fresh durian, durian cakes, durian jams, even durian chips.

You have to wonder how people got past the smell, though.

Fresh durian will scare away even the most adventurous epicure. Ripe off of the tree, it smells rotten to most people. The smell is so bad and so pervasive that you can't bring the fruit into public places.

Still, there are a lucky few (myself included) who don't recognize the taste of sulfur compounds as yucky. I love cabbage and brussel sprouts. I could eat garlic and onion all day long. It's a genetic defect, by it lets me enjoy stinky foods more than the average Joe. The same is the case with durian.

My suggestion is get a small one and a group of extreme friends and try it. If the stink wasn't a factor (and they have bred odor-free durian in Asia), it would be one of the most delicious and perfect foods you could ever eat. Not only is it a perfect combination of sweet and fat, but the protein that it contains is high in tryptophan. So, just like a turkey dinner, eating durian will increase your serotonin levels. This should give you a sugar buzz, followed by a calm sense of happiness and well-being. I like it a lot. I wouldn't eat it every day, but it is definitely worth one try.

Fruit of the Week: Elderberry

Name: Elderberry

Brand: local from Central Iowa

Place of Purchase: DeMoss Pumpkin Farm in Ames, Iowa.

Country/Region of Origin: native to everywhere, but especially found near Camelot.

Product Origin: USA

Price in Iowa: The berries were free, but the jam cost me $5.

Description: Blue-black berries with a single seed grow in a cluster on woody branches.

Flavor: berry--tart, with notes of metal and astringent, similar to blackberry; jam--sweeter, obviously, and the metallic/astringent flavor is weakened in the preserves.

Aroma: similar to blackberry and blueberry.

Texture: firm flesh; the majority of the berry is skin.

Mouth-feel: the seed takes up a lot of space, and be careful if you plan on spitting them out; the juice stains.

Notes: People all over the world have been eating elderflowers and elderberries forever. The flowers can be added to salads, used to make tea or supposedly deep-fat fried in batter. Typically, the berries are dried to preserve them and then they are used later to make beverages, jams and syrups. Birds and squirrels eat them fresh off of the tree. Looking for the full experience, I found myself an elder tree and munched a few. The tiny berries are packed with flavor, and very sweet, but they are also overpoweringly sour and gave me a bad case of cottonmouth.

The jam was much better. I tried it on some fresh rolls, and then I added cream cheese and found perfection. The jam turned up the natural sweetness of the fruit, and downplayed the tartness. I saw some local elderberry wine out at the Amana Colonies. If I get my hands on that, I'll update and post my thoughts.

Fruit of the Week: Longan fruit

Name: Longan; long nhan in Vietnamese (translated "Dragon's eye")

Brand: no stickers

Place of Purchase: From a tree in Central Florida

Country/Region of Origin: native to Southern China and SE Asia.

Product Origin: Vietnam

Price in Iowa: My in-laws are Tai Dam, so they often get free stuff at the market, but these babies are usually $5 a pound.

Description: fruits are cherry-like, with a hard, leathery skin. When the skin is peeled away, a white, translucent fruit is revealed. A large, brown pit occupies about 1/3 of the inner fruit. When canned, the fruit is more milky white and opaque, and there is no seed.

Flavor: sweet with a musky aftertaste; similar to lychee, except for the aftertaste

Aroma: grass and citrus

Texture: moist, gummy and firm

Mouth-feel: much like a firm, gelatin candy, but juicier

Notes: I've had longan before, but always canned in juice or syrup. The canned variety is very sweet, probably due to added sugar, and softer in texture than the fresh variety. Fresh longan come in bunches on the stem (imagine a bunch of cherries if they weren't picked from the branch). Their skin can be juicy, but since these came from Vietnam they were dry and leathery ('like the skin of a toad'). According to my wife, you don't want to eat them until the skin is dry. Otherwise, the fruit sticks to the skin. The fresh fruit was less sweet than the canned, and had a strange aftertaste. The flavor reminded me of the smell of ginko fruit, but not as strong. Still, the firm flesh of the fresh fruit was quite pleasant in comparison to the canned variety. I would recommend these to anyone interested in SE Asia fruits/cuisine, but for everyday eyeball eating, I would stick with lychee.

The Idea

By nature, I am a lister. I create lists of things in order to direct my life. Years can go by, and I may forget everything on a list. However, since I am also a packrat, the lists are eternal. I can pull them out of the file and pick up the quest again.

This yearI found myself with plenty of free time. I spent many nights watching my favorite "food porn" shows on Food Network and Travel Channel. I have long been a fan of cooking shows, Alton Brown's "Good Eats" being my personal favorite. But, I have also enjoyed the food travel shows. There are several, with my first being "Unwrapped" with Mark Summers. Then came "Food Finds" with Sandra Pinckney and "Taste of America" with Mark DeCarlo. Alton Brown got into the mix with "Feasting on Asphalt" (riding motorcycles across America, eating good food) and "Feasting on Waves" (sailing around the Carribean, eating good food). Currently, I am loving "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" with Guy Fieri, "Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern and "Man vs Food" with Adam Richman.

In every episode of "Bizarre Foods," Chef Zimmern heads to the marketplace and tries out the raw materials of many of the dishes he will be eating. Every country that he visits, he tastes the local fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses available in the marketplace. I began to realize that there was a cornucopia of foods that I had never heard of before. So, I started looking around at my local whole foods store (Wheatsfield Grocery in Ames, Iowa; aka the "Hippy Store") and my farmers' markets. I saw many varieties of fruits and cheeses that I had never tasted. This was a hole in my human experience. And in my life, vacuums lead to lists.

So, I created the following lists using information from the source of all knowledge: Wikipedia. They are far from comprehensive, but they are a good starting place for this adventure. I will be using these lists to detail foods that I have tried already, as well as find new foods to try. Think of them as a culinary treasure map. Please feel free to use them for your own experiences, but if you're going to publish them anywhere, at least credit Wikipedia for the data and me for the compliation. You'll also need Adobe Acrobat reader to view the files.

Fruits

Nuts

Juices, Infusions and Potables

Cheeses of Africa

Cheeses of Asia

Cheeses of Europe

Cheeses of Italy

Cheeses of North America

Cheese of Oceania

Cheeses of South America

Cheeses of Switzerland

Cheeses of the UK & Ireland

My plan is to start by trying two new fruits and two new cheeses every month. I will also be detailing my favorite fruits, nuts, potables and cheeses that I have already tried. If you can help me to expand these lists, or find some of the items listed, I will be in your debt.

So welcome. I invite you to join me on this escapade.