In the old days when a child refused to eat durian or didn’t have the stomach to even take a sniff of the King of Fruits, the parents would practically shower the child with milky liquid from head to toe. It was well water mixed with thick durian paste and poured over the head.
It was a belief and a custom of the Malay community in Penang and Kedah to make sure that their children ate and smelt durian, and whatever anti-durian demon that possessed the mind and body of the child must be spirited away.
There was always a logical reason why the Malays practised this weird and laughable custom. Wisdom always seemed to hide behind every Malay community’s practice. Who else would look after the durian orchards (after their death) if they couldn’t eat and smell durian? The children. Who would want to wait at the orchard’s hut nightly before durian dropped from the trees and before two musang (i.e. nocturnal creatures and thieves) stole their produce? Again, the children. This was like an unspoken management skill on work delegation and parenting that one had to learn.
When I was a child, I would follow my late aunt to her Bayan Lepas orchard in the dead of the night to pick durian that had fallen from the trees. With a torchlight in her hands lighting the path into the secondary jungle, she would tell me scary hantu stories akin to a Twilight Zone episode. Why on earth would she want to tell me creepy stories at this hour? She said every time she went into the orchard, she would always meet her mother (my grandmother) looking for durian although she knew her mother was in bed and was too old to do so.
In one instance, I was naïve and stupid to ask this question: “Who was the old woman, really?”
She answered with the light on her face: “Tak tau lah! Macam ni ka?”
She gleefully turned around and faced me with the whole circumference of her gigi palsu (denture) protruding from her mouth. For a moment there, I thought she had turned into a ghost and I shrieked. She held the collar of my shirt to keep me from running away. And she started to laugh her heart out. Oh boy, it was a scare for an 8-year-old boy! We both laughed the whole way until we found durian in the bushes some distance away.
My wife said to me the other day that Malaysians and durian were like music and lyrics. They lived to love durian. They could gobble down durian like there was no day and night, from breakfast to dinner. Every time I went out to buy durian in Chow Kit, I loved watching people from all walks of life eating durian at make shift stalls in Jalan Raja Alang.
It was a fiesta of sorts - Malaysians squatting or sitting - eating at any roadside durian stalls in any city and town. The King of Fruits really lived up to its majestic name, not just because of the threatening thorns and because it was hard to open, but more importantly, the taste would be sinfully delicious, compared with other fruits in tropical countries.
For many durian lovers, it was a moment of ecstasy as if the earth around them had stopped spinning unless the eater has high-blood pressure. Once the taste of creamy flesh played on the palate, no one had the time to babble about worldly affairs. Neither about politics nor current affairs of the country. Enough of that. As a matter of fact, no one was motivated to talk about anything else.
The yellow flesh that slept like kucing tidur in a single pangsa (section of the fruit) was heavenly and once it touched the tongue, the lusciously nectarous with a tinge of bitterness taste would put you on the highest level of ecstasy.
It was a bite to last, really. A bite into the flesh gave a durian fanatic that creamy explosion of incongruent flavours all over and the “delectable” smell of the fruit could stay on your fingers for the rest of the day or worse, it stayed on in the car for the rest of the week. Side-track a little ; there’s a useful tip I’ve just learnt to make sure the smell is reduced every time you put durian in the car.
Using a knife, you need to cut half way through the stalk of the durian and stick it into the air-conditioning vent’s spokes like what you do with a car perfume bottle.
When American actress Jennifer Chastain made Jimmy Kimmel eat a durian in the latter’s talk show some years ago, the host had described the taste as between horrible and delicious as he couldn’t really articulate it; Chastain, the star in the Hollywood film, Molly’s Games, described durian as bleu cheese infused in a creamy pudding that had garlic and onions in it.
Ask any Mat Salleh about their first encounter with durian, and very few would be courageous enough to smell it as they would say durian smells like a soiled gym sock. What more to eat it! They are not wrong, as eating durian is an acquired taste. It is like eating sashimi or bleu cheese for the first time. Check out YouTube and you’ll see how funny and disgusted their reactions to durian are!
Now the durian season is back, yielding an unusually big harvest in the northern states, especially in Balik Pulau, Penang, and Batu Kurau in Perak. Musang King, the most expensive durian suitably grown in Bentong, Pahang, apart from the D24, IOI and Black Thorns species, are readily available everywhere from Chow Kit to fly-by-night stalls in major cities and suburbs.
Some friends went on a road trip to Balik Pulau to feast on durian, while some made a day trip to Batu Kurau where traders were selling a basketful of the fruit for just RM10 and last week, there were orchard owners there (Batu Kurau) who gave away free durians from lorries loaded with the fruit.
In Klang, the price of a week-old but edible durian can go down to just RM1. The durian season also apparently attracted tourists from China to eat the fruit at durian stalls in Kuala Lumpur. They were big spenders, so I heard from durian sellers, especially liking the delectable Musang King.
A friend was complaining about the unusual snail’s pace on Malaysian roads these days, including highways and byways to the north. Raya is well over and done with, but the roads are still congested, bumper to bumper.
“There’s another Raya after Aidilfitri, I reckon. It is Musim Raya Durian,” he quipped.
In any ordinary Malay household, the bumper crop has actually given them the opportunity to dish out both traditional and modern delicacies. Lempuk, serawa, pengat durian, bubur kacang hijau durian and talam durian, and modern-day stuff such as durian crepes, cheese cakes and ice cream are good to be eaten day and night, from breakfast to dinner.
My late mother used to eat her durian with fresh santan (coconut milk) poured over warm rice or steamed glutinous rice accompanied by salted ikan gelama. And sometimes, with a slice of mango, even. This was an “old school” kind of food that northerners used to relish.
My favourite has always been sambal tempoyak petai ikan bilis (stir-fried sambal petai infused with fermented durian flesh and crushed anchovies) and masak lemak tempoyak cili padi (fermented durian flesh cooked in coconut milk and bird’s eye chilli). There are just plenty of dishes that use durian as the base ingredient.
But really, durian does have some side-effects if you over-eat it. One thing for sure, you’d have a splitting headache and nausea even if you are in the pinkest of health. But if you were suffering from Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, eat durian sparingly as the creamy flesh of a durian has the highest sugar content compared with other tropical fruits. Now, where’s my Metformin and Insulin? For I am embarking on a journey to find Musang King in Bentong.
My late mother, who was also a diabetic, always reminded me to drink plain water poured into the pangsa durian after eating the King of Fruits. It would cool your body down, she said. I don’t really quite catch the logic behind the drinking of water poured in the pangsa but wow, that’s another unusual useful tip.
C’est la vie.
The writer is a former NST journalist, now a film scriptwriter
whose penchant is finding new food haunts in the country