One of Anthony Bourdain’s books has a story of his encounter with a fruit called the durian. It was such an odd description of what sounded like an odd food that it stuck in my head. His final conclusion was that he loved it, but it would be impossible to serve in the U.S. because there would be no way to ship or store it because it stinks so much. This, of course, from a man who eats congealed goat’s blood and cobra venom sacs.
Imagine my surprise and excitement when I passed by a whole passel of durians at the grocery store. I hiked up my skirt, asked the lady in the produce section to pick me a good one, gathered that she didn’t touch the stuff, and picked one out myself, going on…nothing.
Next came the adventure of getting it home. The durian is just plain dangerous. It is a medium green color, about a foot tall, eight inches in diameter, and would not look out of place on the end of a chain attached to a wooden handle in the hands of a medieval knight looking to stove in the helm of an armored opponent. That is to say, it is covered in small, hard, sharp spikes and is heavy enough that holding it pushes those spikes into a hand with enough weight to hurt. Pure murder on a plastic grocery bag, but better than an umbrella or walking stick any day to discourage would be muggers or aggressive wildlife.
Assuming that this thing would be better cold, I displaced some stuff in the fridge to make room for my new durian, which mainly meant moving beer around. I live with five guys. Got up early the next morning and went out to tackle this thing.
The knife provided to us in the apartment kitchen was simply not up to the task, partly, I’m sure, from Madison the Chuukese dive master using it to open cans of potted meat, but I doubt it was all that sharp to start. So, out with the new dive knife and into the durian.
From all the hype, I’d expected a worse stink once I finally got past the spikes and the tough skin to the pale yellow flesh. Though pungent, it was not off-putting. It smelled, I dunno, ripe? Like a mixture of freshly washed baby and banana just starting to turn brown, promise with a hint of danger echoing deep in the hippocampus. The meat, wrapped in segments around large, hard, khaki seeds, was firm yet yielding to the touch, like a mango in consistency.
Not knowing what else to do, I dove in. The taste was a strong combination of equal parts passion fruit, feet, the crust on top of the cream cheese, and my great grandfather’s basement. Somehow that description does not sound as tasty as the fruit was, but all those flavors were present. It was remarkable, memorable, delicious, nasty, and utterly unique, like eating foie gras. Not something you want to do every day, but a good experience and an exotic treat. Only Mike the Filipino and Madison would come near the thing. We put the durian down and then disposed of the skin and seeds as you would crab leftovers, sneaking them into a garbage can down the block as quickly as possible. What, you don’t throw stuff in your neighbor’s garbage? Now, to get the stink off my new dive knife. Apologies to Wilde on the title.
