Guest Speaker Series: Jake on Fruit

Three or four years ago Jake worked on a tropical fruit farm in Australia with his pirate uncles. He chimed in with this comment on the Mango post, but I thought it deserved to be in the center stage. No Loitering is pleased to introduce its first ever guest speaker. Clap clap clap yeah.

3 fruits to consider:

The Durian.

I'm not even sure I know what sensuous means, but if it has anything to do with sex, death, sewage, and custard, then I reckon the durian's worth considering.

Almost everyone in Asia considers the durian the aphrodisiac of aphrodisiacs.

Hundreds of heads are smashed by falling durians on durian plantations in Indonesia every year. (For those of you unfamiliar with the durian, they range from about the size and shape of a volleyball to that of a slightly more rounded rugby ball, they weigh a solid 3-5kg, and they’re covered in rock hard 2cm widebottom spines.)

I’ve heard the taste of a durian affectionately described as “vanilla custard passed through a sewer pipe.” The person that said that to me actually drooled a little mid sentence.

My first personal experience with durians involved two grown yet admittedly feral men ecstatically sucking gobs of the flan-colored cream from scarred and calloused hands and then snuffling like the wild pig whose throat they’d cut in the coming dusk as they gnawed the last flecks of rancid flavor from seed and rind alike.

Durians are neither peeled nor pared but rather break open from inner pressure as they rot to fragrant perfection.

The Soursop.

Again, I’m not sure if this is sensuous, but I feel somehow compelled to describe.

Every soursop I’ve ever eaten has been covered completely in green ants when picked. Green ants sting when disturbed. Picking a soursop disturbs green ants.

Soursops are lumpy and irregular green tumors that dangle from sparsely leaved 3m treebushes that look like they have a bark disease. They look reasonably appetizing unripe but are inedible (well, tasteless, rather) until their skin dulls, grays, and starts eroding away, the stems that hold it to the twigs above fray, and the fruit itself gets so soft and fragile that it inevitably breaks and leaks on the way home from the tree.

The inside of a soursop is a mound of white fleshy chunks that hide almost steel solid black seeds. The texture of the white bits is that of marinated cotton batting, and by the time one consumes a soursop it’s almost always been reduced by strainer and wooden mallet to liquid the color of melted Italian water ice.

It is truly one of the most delicious sweet sour citrusy-acidic flavors I’ve ever tasted.

The Miracle Fruit.

I’ve had one miracle fruit ever. It was a single red berry the size and shape of an Advil gelcap on a little baby mini-tree with branches like half parabolas reaching for the sun. As my uncle bent down to pick it he asked, “Want to try a new drug?”