Ambrosia

By special request from reader Mitch, I'm going to tell you all about mangosteens. R.W. "Johnny" Apple has a great article about them in the NYT, in which he explains that fruit fly worries, rather than difficulties in transportation, have prevented Americans from enjoying this amazing fruit. Irradiation appears to offer a solution, though. As Apple notes, Queen Victoria, who tasted mangosteens on some tour of the imperial posessions, reputedly offered a knighthood to anyone who could get a mangosteen to her in edible condition. This had somehow lead me to think transport was still the issue today, but of course that's silly; I routinely eat white peaches from America here in Singapore. Strangely enough, they are reliably better here as well, I really can't think how. My mother was astonished. As you all know, it's hard to get good peaches in the States, even if you live in Georgia. They pick them all unripe, and a fuzzy, hard, greenish, unripe peach is a wretched thing unworthy of the name. My sister didn't even think she liked peaches until she went to Italy and had a real one. Maybe we are sending them all abroad to discerning Singaporeans? But enough about peaches!

Mitch wants to know, are mangosteens as good as they say? Well, yes, Mitch, they are. They're amazing. They look so funny; click on the link for a nice photo. The rind is thick and purple, and should yield to light pressure from your fingertips. The sepals at the top give them a jaunty, cartoonish air, as if each one were wearing a silly hat. Inside are little white sections, one of which is always much larger and contains a flat pit that you may want to spit out. Actually, there is a little seed even in the smallest sections, but you don't notice it at all and it's quite edible. They are functionally seedless. The sections have about the texture of a canned mandarin orange slice (sorry, that's not very appealing taste-wise, but it's accurate). Slightly creamier, though, the way a good mango is creamy, but without any stringiness. They don't really taste like anything else. Well, hey have a slightly perfumed taste, the way that fresh litchis or longan do. (Longan, or "dragon's eyes" are another great tropical fruit, little and round, with a single translucent white orb coming freely off a black seed, enclosed in a brown, papery husk.) And I think they taste a little like strawberries, but it's more that they have a lemony-sour taste mingling with a very, very sweet taste, the way a good strawberry does. Defects: none. Well, they can get mushy when overripe and they are very perishable. I will cause you all to doubt John's sanity again when I mention that he doesn't eat them, or really any fruit except apples. He loves fresh fruit juices, of which they have great ones in every hawker stall. He thinks fruit is too hard to eat, I think. Like, you have to peel it and stuff. I don't know why I'm always criticising my husband's food preferences on this blog; it must be some passive-agressive thing, which doesn't reflect very well on me. Let me reiterate that John is a fine man in every way, and posesses unparalleled aesthetic refinement. But the fruit thing,seriously, that's kinda weird. Every week a huge box of fruit gets delivered from the wet market and put in a big basket; every week Tena (our maid), Zoë and I eat the whole thing and John has a few apples. I don't know. De gustibus, etc.

Another tropical fruit which is really amazing is the dragonfruit. I went to where they grow them in south Vietnam, and it's odd-looking: they put the pots in the center of an old tire raised up to about six feet on a post, and then the plant trails down. They are a succulent, with blade-like leaves, and the fruit forms right off the edge of the leaf, the way the flowers of a night-blooming cereus do. The fruits themselves are ridiculous looking, and sublime: bright magenta rind embellished with violent green leaflets. Inside is the easiest to eat fruit in the word: a single, foot-ball shaped piece of fruit about the size of a big mango, white, dotted evenly with edible black seeds. My travelling companion and I bought a motorcycle in Saigon and drove it to Hanoi, about 1,200 miles. It meant we could turn off the road to find great beaches, and one of my fondest memories of the trip is eating fresh dragonfruit on an empty white beach with a gaggle of admiring children. For these fruits, transport is the problem. Even in north Vietnam they are only so-so. I've never had a truly great one here in Singapore, though I've had good ones. When ripe they are delicious and tooth-ache sweet. Outside of the immediate growing region, though, they are insipid. They taste like the edge of a watermelon, where it's turning white next to the rind. A shame. I see via google that some intrepid farmer is growing them in California. They don't call it the golden state for nothing.

Comments

[Kinsey]

hello neighbor, in typepadville that is, nice blog you got here :)

[Mitch Mills]

I'll definitely have to seek out mangosteens the next time I'm back in that part of the world. I can vouch for the greatness of fresh litchis and longans, and I had a dragonfruit in southern China once (grown locally, I think) and it too was great. But only having had one, I don't know if it was up to southern Vietnam standards.

I was amazed in my time in Asia at the incredible variety of interesting tropical fruit that I had never seen or heard of before. A lot of it looks downright absurd, like it was drawn by Dr. Seuss or something. I'm particularly fond of the looks of the fuzzy little rambutans. Of course the durian looks (and smells) like it was designed by DARPA.

And yep, that's strange about John and fruit. But perhaps it DOES explain why he chose an apple orchard as an analogy in that discussion on file sharing.

[Ray]

Uncle Henry Adams declared avocados and durians cruel disappointments, but even his difficult affections were won by the mangosteen. I hope I taste one before I get old.

[Belle]

Thanks, Kinsey. Ray, just come on down to Singapore and I'll buy you some.