My Durian adventure
One evening, while randomly switching TV channels, I stumbled upon the end of a documentary about durian.
The 5 minutes I managed to see were enough to catch my attention, since the durian was described as ‘the king of fruits’ with an unique flavor, an unique odor (very unique, I’d say), warming and aphrodisiac properties.
The following day I went to a market in the town, looking for the miraculous fruit. After around 20 minutes wandering around the market, I noticed a durian pile.
As I was getting closer to the pile, a strong odor hit me. I didn’t know where the smell was coming from and I kinda wanted to refuse the idea that it was coming from the durian, so I started to look around in search of another possible source. Noticing some public toilets not very far away, I assumed the odor was coming from there (yeah, it was smelling that bad!).
As I was staring at the durian pile, the seller noticed my disgusted expression, cracked a fruit and told me to taste it with an almost sadistic smirk on his face. I said to myself that I will definitely taste it, even if I won’t be able to eat anything else for the rest of the day, just not to give the seller the satisfaction that I couldn’t.
Inside of the thorn-covered husk, there is a creamy yellow flesh gathered around a stone.
Its consistency is similar to a vanilla pudding and to me it tasted something like bananas in an advanced stage of ripeness, mixed with garlic and alcohol. It’s a pretty interesting flavor and kinda hard to describe; it also gives a feeling of warmth in all your body.
After tasting it, I bought 1 dorian (it cost $7/kg and 1 fruit typically weighs 1 to 3 kgs) and I have to admit I was really pleased to see the disappointment in the seller’s eyes, who couldn’t enjoy the ‘show’ he was hoping for.
Later I found out that there are different species of dorian, with different smells, different tastes. The one I had was a Malaysian dorian, which is well-known for being really smelly — call it bad luck?