bookofjoe

Durian tasting with Fuchsia Dunlop

The renowned Chinese food expert and cookbook author crawled the stalls of Singapore with K.F. Seetoh, father of the makansutra guidebooks about hawker food, and they were joined by by Singaporean food writer Christopher Tan for a tasting of three varieties of durian (above).

Here's her report, from the February 13, 2010 Financial Times.

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After dinner we are joined by Singaporean food writer Christopher Tan for a durian tasting. Seetoh selects three different fruits from different trees, and soon we are sitting under a plastic tarpaulin while he cracks open the first with a machete. The aggressive spikes of its skin yield to reveal tender yellow fruit sacs in their cradles of pith. Armed with thin plastic gloves, we pry out the flesh with our fingers. It smells like a sweet custard, with a whiff of turpentine and vegetable pungency, and has a texture like ripe avocado. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would ban this particular fruit from hotels and underground trains.

The second durian is stranger and more complex. The yellow lobes of its flesh look faintly putrescent within their greasy-looking membranes. We poke them out with our fingers, inhale the sweet sweatiness of their odour, and then devour them. It’s an amazing taste, sumptuous and faintly disturbing. The third durian is overwhelming, steeper and darker, with a marked praline flavour, a hint of bitterness, and a lingering stealthy aftertaste. It has all the appeal of a decomposing Ardrahan cheese, Hunanese stinking bean curd and rotted shark – which is to say that some people adore it, and some don’t. But for our gloves, says Seetoh, the smell would remain under our fingernails for days.

By the end of the evening, I am in a durian haze, hot and sultry, haunted by that weird and magnificent scent. In the morning, I was practically a durian virgin; now, I’m hooked.

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I would so love to someday spend time in Singapore doing just what Dunlop did, ideally in the company of someone as expert as Seetoh.

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.

BehindTheMedspeak: Malaysian Medical Resources

The website features "Daily medical blogs by Malaysian medical doctors and links to Malaysian medical websites."

Always good to have other points of view.

switch me — 'Ouch!'

Created by French designer Josselin Zaïgouche,

who thinks it could help reduce energy use.

I can see how it might be effective.

[via Nerdcore]

Greg Bear visits Google

The Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning author stopped by Google's Kirkland, Washington office on August 12, 2008, part of the Authors@Google series.

Sterling Silver Colman's Mustard Top

 

"Mustard with mutton is the sign of a glutton."

Ideal for engraving.

£50–£55, depending on size (100g or 170g jar; mustard included).

'All-Nighters' — Insomnia and its discontents

The New York Times on February 25, 2010 quietly introduced a website called "All-Nighters," wherein various writers and thinkers — so far, Siri Hustvedt, Jonah Lehrer and Patricia Morrisroe — afflicted with insomnia ruminate on the problem.

Good reading if you can't sleep.

Who knows, maybe you'll doze off during your explorations....

Can't hurt, in any event, which is always how I look at things that might not help but have no downside.

Note to self: forward this post to Lisa Russ Spaar.

Food Lift — Because 'getting food to your mouth can be hard work'

But wait, there's more: "Order online and we'll include the Super Bib absolutely free!"

$99.99 CAD.

[via laslentejas]