Fruit - Thailand

My favorite fruits are usually those of the sea, but not in Asia. Here, there is plenty to be had on land, and my pleasures fluctuate between the nautical and the tropical.

We’ll start with the more mundane and move to the more unique. For starters, the mangoes in Thailand are pulpy with no detectable fiber. Yellow when ripe, the festive color and juicy sweet nectar slips smoothly down your heat-closed throat and provides yet another form of relief on a too-humid Bangkok morning.

I’ve never cared for ripe papaya, even from the vine. The texture is a bit too mushy combined with a flavor too ripe. I’ll admit that a few slices too many will make me gag. Yet there is little better than a fresh papaya salad with finely grated slices of elegant green. Unlike any other fruit, papaya is better before it’s ripe.

Lychee is juicy and easy to peel, making it a warm, sweet refresher on a humid Bangkok afternoon. The pulp leaks juice at the slightest touch, and it’s ideal for smoothies, shakes, and health-conscious munching.

Longan, an almost-cousin to lychee, is one of the fruit I care less for. It manages to be simultaneously too sweet and inadequately. The pulp is chewier and firmer and grows a thin layer around a rock-hard pit. Longan is dense with so much concentrated sugar it stings. I would never turn it down, but I’d pick lychee first every time.

There is lychee and there is longan. Rambutan is their love child, boasting the sweetness of lychee but a firmer, less juicy fruit closer to longan in texture. It looks deadly with pink sea urchin-esque, don’t-mess-with-me shell, but the intimidatingly beautiful red spikes guard a firm, sweet, clear flesh with a rock-hard core.

Dragonfruit is a simple yet thirst-quenching, hunger-sopping, semi-solid white flesh sequined by tiny black dots. The astonishing psychedelic acid-trip pink prongs fan out like scales or wings, the intimidating color a brazen testament to how the fruit acquired such a fierce name. The fruit itself is surprisingly subtle and light in flavor, a softer-than-kiwi center, juicy, with a hint of sweetness, peppered with seeds that crunch like sesame. Dragonfruit looks like the reverse of a starry sky and is one of few things that tastes as good as it looks.

The thick, hard purple shell of Mangosteen makes it resemble a small fortress, but snap off the top leaves and your nails easily break through the soft rind underneath. The fruit is a juicy, soft white pulp that comes off in cloves like an orange and resembles pretty, delicate skinless garlic. Don’t let the arduous task of peeling off that thick outer layer deter you. Once inside, you’ll have an epiphany and see that you’re eating the best fruit on earth. It’s a pity this stuff only grows in South Asia. I’d eat it every day if I could.

Mangosteen may be the greatest fruit on earth, but Durian is the worst. It is, IMO, the most disgusting food on earth. With the smell of ripe sewage that lings in your nostrils for days, durian launches an assault on your olfactory system and challenges any preconceived definition of the word “edible”. I am repeatedly told by fans that durian is simply an acquired taste, but I have yet to learn what atrocities one must endure in order to acquire such a taste.

I never thought I’d be able to describe anything I put into my mouth as PUTRID, but that is what durian is. It fulfills the (hopefully) undefinable taste that can only be attributed to rotting flesh. One bit and your skin will crawl and you will never forget the sensation. I tried it once years ago and I will never try it again.

In what I believe to be a pretty thorough spread on fruit, these photos alone should be enough to set you salivating. Until next time, enjoy the fruits of my labor, and may your trees always bear fruit…GROAN.