Durian is reigned the king of fruits in Southeast Asia. One either loves or hates this fruit.

Don’t be surprise that even the adventurous Andrew Zimmern from the Bizarre Foods show does not like durian.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V5mWjOzkgk&w=600&h=400]

Growing up in Malaysia, Ben and I love this fruit. I remembered when I was young, my family will buy a whole big basket of durian (consists of 15 or more durian) with one of my uncle and family during the durian season. We will sit around the basket and enjoy one durian after another. I missed those days.

Durian has a thorn covered husk which needs skill to open in order to get to the edible flesh. The strong distinctive odour or aroma can be fragrant to some and offensive to others.

I found the above  frozen durian from Empire Supermarket which located near the King Buffet. The package above costs $7.95 which is a reasonable buy. We defrosted the frozen durian in the package in a bowl of cold water. We could not wait to try it.

The durian turned out to be pretty good, creamy and custardy. Best of all they are seedless. More value for your money. We brought some to a BBQ gathering with our Southeast Asian friends and it turned out to be the most popular item of the day. I bought more for Ben to enjoy before he left for his Beijing assignment.

By the way, out of the 8 to 10 packages that we bought, there is one that did not turn out well. Some of the durian in the package were not ripe. Unripe durian will be fibrous instead of creamy. In Cantonese, we described such as “sang farn shue”, literally translated to raw yam.

Do you know that durian is not plucked from the tree? Ripen durian will fall to the ground and the plantation worker will just pick them from the ground. Sometimes, they put up net around the durian trees so that the durian will fall on the net instead of the ground. So, beware not to wonder into a durian plantation.