While in Vietnam and Cambodia, we ran into some amazing fruit. Many were familiar, but with extra pizzazz, while others were completely new to us. So, this blog post is about the fruits we encountered at the dawn of summer.
Dragon Fruit
Ubiquitous in Vietnam. It was available at every breakfast buffet and in every fruit plate. It grows on a vine and has a gorgeous fuchsia exterior and a foamy white interior with small black, kiwi-like seeds. Our previous experience with dragon fruit was the imported variety in the US and was definitely lacking. The taste and texture was more akin to styrofoam than a tropical fruit. In Vietnam, we had the pleasure to try "excellent" examples of dragon fruit. They were much better than the US version, with a certain vibrancy and their own flavor. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that different from a light squirt of meyer lemon on a near-sugarless meringue filled with poppy seeds. In other words, not much different than a bland and slightly acidic kiwi. So it was different, but still, not worth searching out unless you are really into different textures.
Mango
So many varieties. So many choices. We tried about half a dozen different varieties (of the dozens that actually grow where we traveled). Some green ones, you eat the rind too, while others you just scoop out the deliciousness. The best one actually dropped from the sky. I was swimming in the pool at the hotel in Siem Reap, when plop. Right in front of me is a small green mango about two inches long. It came from the tree overhanging the pool and since it just dropped, we figured it was ripe, so we ate it. It had a vibrancy that made you want to belt a trill.
Durian
The love it or hate it fruit. Some say it smells like hell and tastes like heaven. We thought it was just pure hell when we tried it in Hoi An. The smell is so strong and gag inducing that you're not allowed to eat it indoors. Really people should know better that something the size and and weight of your head, covered in spikes, that falls from a tree, shouldn't be trifled with. No more durian for me.
Chocolate Pudding Fruit
This was an interesting fruit. On the outside, it looked like a brown, soft mango, but you open it up and inside is a gushy pulp that does actually taste kind of like chocolate pudding. We saw it in the markets both in Hoi An and Siem Reap.
Watermelon
The third leg of the fruit triumvirate while we were there that included mango and dragon fruit. It was on every fruit plate and available by the mound in every market. Basically the same as the north american red version.
Bananas
Available everywhere. Many different varieties. Some long. Some short. Some green. Some yellow. Most of them very tasty ranging from a hint of apple blossoms all the way to the cavendish bannaishness that we are used to. There were also a lot of banana flower salads to eat.
Pineapple
We saw a lot of pineapple and pretty much all of it was a just more delicious example of the dole variety found in supermarkets and bodegas throughout the US.
Jackfruit
Definitely one of the gems of the trip. We tried it cooked, freeze dried and fresh. Cooked and freeze dried, it takes on a consistent flavour that's enjoyable, but it's nothing like fresh. You usually buy fresh in little, plastic wrapped packages because a jackfruit is an extra large, non-spiky version of Durian that nobody could eat before it went bad. The taste is like a party in your mouth. It starts vibrant and acidic and then moves towards sweetness, only to taper off into a tropical, floral medley. This flavour symphony takes a good 30 seconds to progress, so savour every bite.
Custard Apple
A fist-sized green fruit made of scalloped wedges. You pull apart the wedges with your hands and inside each wedge is a big black seen surrounded by a white, custardy pulp that sort of tastes like apples, but it's a stretch. I enjoyed it, but Catherine wasn't a fan.
Green Orange
Some of the oranges have green rinds. They are ripe, but the pulp is orange and can look very alien to our eyes. Still tastes like an orange though, although the extra sweet, mandarin-like flavours were fairly common.
Rambutan
Very much like a lychee but looks fuzzier. It tastes like a lychee too, but with a milder flavour. I could even eat it. Contrast that to longan, which has an extra strong flavour that I can't stand after the unfortunate mistake of buying a kilo in Hawaii and then sitting down to eat it all in one sitting.
Mangosteen
We tried mangosteen twice. The first time was a purple, unripe mangosteen in Hoi An. The lady at the market warned me not to buy it (which begs the question why it was being sold in the first place), but she was right. It took a pocket knife to saw through the hard outer shell and inside was a fruit that tastes like a raspberry, but with the acidity cranked up to 11. It was in edible. We also tried a ripe, white mangosteen at Cuisine Wat Damnak in Siem Reap. This specimen was amazing and did sort of taste like a tropical raspberry but with a more complex flavour profile.
Tang Fruit
Ok, so I don't remember the real name of this fruit. It was served to us at the end of the meal at Cusine Wat Damnak in Siem Reap. It's a two inch pod filled with about 20 seeds, each surrounded by a neon orange pulp. The pulp tasted like orange tang, except without the chemically aftertaste. It grows wild in the Cambodian rainforest.
No comments :
Post a Comment