I count any day an overall success if it involves eating durian.
If you don’t know what a durian is, rest assured there is no way I can explain it to you online. Oh, I can send you to web pages with lots of accurate and evocative information on this king of fruits, including amusing anecdotes about people getting thrown out of fancy hotels for carrying durians into their rooms. In its day, The Rite Of Spring caused uproars in fancy hotels, but you wouldn’t expect to get the gist of it by reading a web page.
I could try to attempt to describe what it’s like to eat durian: a custard with a persistent inner skin, redolent of vanilla and fermentation and perhaps a hint of onion, with a smell like an open sewer? Nope, that’s both too coarse and too kind.
I’ll resort to appeal to authority, in this case Alfred Wallace, the autodidact natural historian who co-originated the theory of Natural Selection with Charles Darwin. In his book The Malay Archipelago, Wallace describes the fruit’s taste:
“A rich butter-like custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it comes wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities.”
Fifteen years ago I bought a whole durian in Oakland’s Chinatown and ate it while Matthew was visiting. I quoted the above passage aloud. Matthew took his first taste, nodded, and said “He left out ‘match heads.’”
Wallace’s description continues:
“Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no nausea, or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it, the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact to eat durians is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the east to experience.”
When I ate my fiirst durian, I had been reading of them for a year or so, with increasing curiosity. At the time I lived in Arlington, Virginia. A Vietnamese bakery around the corner from my house opened up. I walked into their grand opening celebration. There, behind the shiny glass counter, uncut and nicely frosted, was a durian cake. I ordered a slice. The clerk-baker-owner beamed at me, said “adventurous man!” I hurried home with the cake, ate it standing up at the kitchen counter.
My life has not been the same since.
But “adventurous” was a magnanimous term. The true adventure in eating durian may lie in the harvest. Here’s Wallace again, on the natural history of the tree:
“The Durian grows on a large and lofty forest tree, somewhat resembling an elm in its general character, but with a more smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round or slightly oval, about the size of a large cocoanut, of a green colour, and covered all over with short stout spines, the bases of which touch each other, and are consequently somewhat hexagonal, while the points are very strong and sharp. It is so completely armed, that if the stalk is broken off it is a difficult matter to lift one from the ground. The outer rind is so thick and tough, that from whatever height it may fall, it is never broken. From the base to the apex five very faint lines may be traced, over which the spines arch a little; these are the sutures of the carpels, and show where the fruit may be divided with a heavy knife and a strong hand....
“When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way to eat Durians to perfection is to get them as they fall; and the smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes a very good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the Dyaks raw. In a good fruit season large quantities are preserved salted, in jars and bamboos, and kept the year round, when it acquires a most disgusting odour to Europeans, but the Dyaks appreciate it highly as a relish with their rice.
“The Durian is, however, sometimes dangerous. When the fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under the trees. When a Durian strikes a man in its fall, it produces a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing open the flesh, while the blow itself is very heavy; but from this very circumstance death rarely ensues, the copious effusion of blood preventing the inflammation which might otherwise take place. A Dyak chief informed me that he had been struck down by a Durian falling on his head, which he thought would certainly have caused his death, yet he recovered in a very short time.”
Reading that makes walking up Broadway to get a bowl of durian sticky rice seem less risky.
Durian has been referred to as an “acquired taste.” This is clearly wrong. I have never known a person who dislikes durian ever to change her mind. I’ve only known one person who was indifferent to the fruit. (Reader, I married her.) My own first taste of durian, as diluted and cream-frostinged as it was, seemed at the time like a doorway had been opened in my mind.
I’ve never had fresh durian, and I’m told that fresh durian is to the frozen stuff I’ve eaten as the frozen stuff I’ve eaten is to slightly durian-flavored tofu. But I have a jar of durian jam in the old refrigerator — which, come to think of it, I should finish, as I’m certain Becky won’t allow it in the new one she just bought — and I’m the only person I know who actually likes the repellent little durian-flavored wafer cookies the Asian stores sell around here, which can empty a banquet hall when opened. I suspect I’ll enjoy fresh durian just fine.
Today, as Matthew and I finished lunch, I pretended to dither over dessert. He saw right through me, and besides, he was buying. “I can’t imagine,” I said, “that lying on my deathbed I’d ever say anything like ‘I shouldn’t have eaten so much durian.’”
