The King of Fruits

Yesterday we had our youngest son with us as he had to get some immunizations so we kept him out of school. We thought it'd be nice to treat him to some real chinese food (he was adopted at age 8 from China) so we went to a restaurant in chinatown that serves authentic chinese food instead of the fried rice and egg roll stuff you get on every corner. I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere. Oh well, everything else was delish. Being as it was a chinese restaurant we all shared our meals anyways. After we left the restaurant I decided since we were in the area, I'd like to go to the big asian supermarket. We went up and down the aisles looking at what they had to offer, picking up a few things here and there. Chopsticks, bowls of noodle soup, lotus seed buns, a package of roasted seaweed, several packages of dried whole anchovies, pickled garlic, you know, the usual. Over in the meat section we found lots of goodies like pig ovaries and uterus, pig bung, cow hooves, blood cakes, and various innards. I didn't buy any of those at the time. I'll have to learn how to cook something like that first. My main goal was to find the egg section and see if they sold the fertilized duck eggs with near fully formed baby ducks inside called Balut. Unfortunately when I found the egg section, there were only regular chicken eggs, thousand year eggs and quail eggs. No balut to be found. Surely somewhere in Houston has to sell balut! What I did find though, was the section carrying durian, the king of fruits. This is a large, spiky, yellowish green fruit that has a reputation for being the smelliest of all fruit. I quickly told Mason that I wanted to purchase one to try. Only last week we bought Durian's cousin, Jackfruit, and it was to die for good. I thought perhaps if we got past the legendary smell, the meat of the durian would taste similar. We were just about to grab one of the prickly beasts when Mason spotted a little section of frozen pre-cut durian slices. We decided that, although not as impressive as buying, cutting and eating from a fresh, whole durian, we were better off trying the pre-cut frozen durian slices first. Durian is still durian, is it not? We came home and set the groceries down so that I could begin putting them away. I noticed a strange smell in the kitchen, but surely it couldn't be the durian. It was frozen solid, in a plastic container, securely closed and wrapped in plastic and bagged on the table. I put the rest of the food away and left the durian out to thaw. I joined Mason outside and brought the dried anchovies with me. We had eaten something very similar at a korean restaurant in downtown Houston a few weeks back, little dried whole fish, and so I knew what to expect. I am not sure what type of fish we had at the korean place, but they were crunchier and lighter tasting than the anchovies. Still good though. My cat apparently thought so too as she ripped open one of the bags and ate half the contents. Soon my older daughter walked out with the bag of pickled garlic and asked to try some. She's one of the more adventurous of all the kids, always being the first to ask if she can have a bug or piece of whatever odd thing it is we're eating. The pickled garlic was great though it tasted more like the pickling spice than of garlic. Finally Mason suggested we bring out the durian. It was still slightly frozen, but not solid. There was that odd smell again. I peeled off the wrapping and opened the plastic box it was in. Bravely I leaned down and took a big whiff. WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE! I thought I was going to fall over where I stood! Mason, Jacob and Skyelar took turns smelling it. Yikes. Jacob thought it smelled fine, but then again he is one of those rare types who doesn't think the smell of skunk (or Heineken) is offensive. The rest of us all had second thoughts about putting something that smelled so rank into our mouths. Mason was the first to try it. He remarked that although it didn't taste anywhere near as bad as it smelled, and he didn't understand why Andrew Zimmern had such a negative reaction to it (gagging and spitting it out), it was by NO means good. I tried a bit. Definitely milder tasting than smelling, but this was not a fruit I would eat for fun. If the frozen pre-cut nicely packaged kind was this rank, how horrible would it have been freshly cut and room temperature? I can only imagine. I went inside to put up the garlic and anchovies and when I came out, Mason informed me that Skyelar was on her 4th piece. "It's not so bad" she told me. We told the rest of the kids to come out and give it a try. Jacob took a bite and said although the smell didn't bother him, it tasted like onions and he didn't like it. Gage spit his out. Qi took one look and ran the other way. Mia took a big bite and declared "mmmm!!! Mama thats goooooddd! Can I have?" Sure thing baby, it all yours! notice the look on my face. Hurry up and take the picture so I can swallow this and get it out from under my nose!