Durian Isu

It is not the ordinary durian we are talking about. This is another species of durian which believed can only be found in Borneo. It is commonly known as Durian Isu in Sarawak.

Some people do call it as Buah Isu or wild durian. In scientific term, it is called Durio oxleyanus. At a glance, it has not much differences than the ordinary durian which everyone is craving about. But when you look at it more carefully, this Durian Isu has longer and sharper curving thorns than the ordinary durian. Thus, you just have to be extra careful when open them or your fingers might get hurt!

 

Once opened, you can notice the flesh are much more yellowish than the normal durian. Some are even orange in color. They are very sticky and easily stick behind your teeth when eating them. The taste is a bit different from the ordinary durian with its very unique odor. Is hard to describe, perhaps you should try it out yourself!

 

The edible flesh are thinner than the one in the ordinary durian, but trust me, they are equally delicious!!! I personally like it very much!

 

However, Durian Isu are harder to find on the market. So, if you wish to try it, you may need to test your luck first~! ;)

The Purple Mangosteen

This is the fruit that I used to come across in my primary school textbook but nowadays not many people have mentioned about it or even remember its existence especially the younger generation. Some may never taste it before.

In local language, it is called "Buah Manggis". I never know its English name until I asked my online teacher - Google. It is the Purple Mangosteen! The word "purple" is added to the name as the rind of the fruit is dark purple in color which appears to be very unique. The size of the fruit isn't that big, in between the size of ping pong ball and tennis ball.

 

In biological term, Purple Mangosteen belongs to the Family of Clusiaceae and Genus of Garcinia. It is from the Species of G. mangostana and therefore its binomial name is Garcinia mangostana.

 

The rind of the mongosteen is thick, but not hard to break into to reach the arils / flesh. There is no tools needed in order to open it except your palm! Just put a mangosteen between your palm with your fingers crossed, then pressed it with a little bit of force and the rind will break apart.

 

The flesh is white in color and it is soft. The taste is simply sweet but some with slight sour. There is no strange aroma in the fruit, so I guess it is not too hard to accept it. I found it very delicious and nice to eat!

Perhaps you can notice that among the cloves, there is one with bigger size than others. This clove is the one with a big seed inside. Yes! It can be eaten! Usually I will just swallow it into the stomach and trust me, it is not hard to swallow as you can imagine. The seed is covered by a layer of slippery flesh so it makes the swallowing process become smooth and easy!

While I browsing through the Net, I discovered a very interesting piece of information about this fruit. The gearwheel-like pedals at the bottom of the fruit determine the number of cloves inside it. If the pedals are 6, meaning there will be 6 cloves inside the fruit and if they are 7 meaning 7 cloves! I found it quite true and if you are doubt, perhaps you can buy some on the market and try out?

I also discovered that common mangosteen will normally have 6 or 7 gearwheel-like pedals but I am not sure if this is true. There is also an old saying that you can't eat sweets after eaten the purple mangosteen and that's the saying that make me stay a distance away from eating the fruit when I was still a kid, but now I don't think that will stop me from trying the very delicious local fruit!

The Exotic Buah Lumok

This is quite a unique local exotic fruit which I guess most of you may never see it before. Even if you ever meet it somewhere, you may never taste it. I think Chinese family seldom eat this fruit.

In Iban community, this fruit is called "Buah Lumok". However, common Sarawak people will call it "Buah Terap" or more precisely it is called "Buah Tarap". Its scientific name is something I am not sure how to pronounce - Artocarpus odoratissimus.

The fruit can only be found in Borneo and it is cousin to Jackfruit (Buah Nangka), cempedak and breadfruit (Buah Sukun). In a more scientific saying, these fruits are from a same scientific family of  Moraceae and the Genus of Artocarpus.

The fruit has a very unique appearance. The shape is pretty much like the breadfruit (if you ever see one) which is rounded but a little oval. The rind of the fruit made its appearance so special. It is thick and fully covered with soft, broad and "rubber-feel" spines.

The color of the rind is greenish. Upon ripen, the color will change to greenish yellow then brownish. It is not too hard to open the fruit. Just apply some pressure onto the rind, then tear it and the rind will break apart.

The arils look very similar to Jackfruit but it is smaller, the texture is smoother, instead of yellowish, they are white in color, juicy and about grape's size. I aware that the flesh above look a bit yellowish. It is because the fruit is a bit over-ripen and it turned from white to yellowish.

The taste is sweet with distinctive aroma. The seeds are much more smaller than the one in Jackfruits and brownish in color. Heard it can be eaten after boiling or roasting.

Despite the unattractive appearance, the taste is not too hard to be accepted and it is a exotic fruit that worth a try!

2010 New Year BBQ

How you spent the first day of year 2010? I spent it by attending a barbecue organized by Sparkish at a rural area, near a private chalet owned by his relative. Those joined this BBQ session were mostly Otaku... well if you dunno what Otaku is, you can try to google it. ^ ^

All of us played our part by helping to buy necessities and foods for this BBQ session. We departed and headed to the place at around 4pm with 2 cars. It took about 20 minutes to reach the BBQ venue.

The route heading to the venue was a challenging one. We need to go through quite a distance of narrow and untarred road to reach the place. It certainly needs a good driving skill or else your car may end up in the mud!

Variation of foods but not the quantity that became Sparkish choice when preparing the foods. That's why, it was not just chicken wings for the BBQ. We had wide range of foods, besides chicken wings, there were pork, beef, fish, prawns, clams, fish balls, Japanese bean curds, sausages, sweet corns, sweet potatoes and pulut panggang. You can see the foods from the following photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As usual in a BBQ, burning up charcoal is one of the toughest task to perform. Realized of this, we prepared the charcoal fire starter to ease the process. Vincent had done a good job on this. He was working on the charcoal for more than half an hour. Finally his efforts paid off when the charcoal was ready for the barbecue!

 

Everyone had put in efforts in order to make the BBQ a success. Some prepared and burnt the charcoal, while others helped to prepare the foods. When the barbecue started, everyone played their role to help. Some busy flipping the foods to avoid charring, some applied butter and honey onto the BBQ foods. Nonetheless, still quite a lot of them were over burnt! Perhaps we were lack of experience in controlling the fire.

 

That's why we appointed a person to be the quality assurance (QA). His job is to make sure the charred part of the food being cut off or removed as the chemical may cause cancer. Well, I think he talked and made fun around more than doing the work, at the end of the day, we had to remove the char by ourselves. ^ ^

We also appointed a guy whose responsibility is to keep the flies away from the fresh foods. He's the pities one sitting alone at one side taking care of the flies. Anyway, I guess he had done a good job there!

The BBQ continued till the sky was dark. Our aim was to grill all the foods we prepared and we successfully done it at around 8pm. Everyone had done a great job!

 

We awarded ourselves by enjoying the foods in the air-cond chalet while watching Transformers with laptop.

 

 

 

Now, can you guess what is shown in the picture below? Are they rats? Are they charcoals? No!! They are "sweet potato's charcoal"!! This is the result when you over burnt the sweet potatoes. We wrapped the potatoes with aluminum foil and then put them into the burning charcoal.

I guess we had extremely over-burnt the sweet potatoes, when we were about to eat them, the potatoes became very light in weight and when we opened the foil, this is the thing that really shocked us and became the biggest laughter of all night!!

 

The event ended at about 9pm and after the clearing and cleaning jobs, we left the place with a lot of fun and satisfaction. It was a great event in the first day of 2010. Special thanks to Sparkish for his effort to get this good place for us and made the event a success!