Sadly, as modernity makes its swift crawl into the countryside, quickly gobbling up vast tract of rainforest and the inhabitants that go with it, there is a danger of the wealth of information will perish someday.
To be a true blue Malaysian, one must eat
durian.
Durian is perhaps the jungle’s most revered
product and it has been collecting fans for
centuries. Victorian naturalist Alfred R.
Wallace on his study trip to the Malay
Archipelago was perhaps the first westerner
to sample durian 150 years ago. “To eat
durian is a new sensation worth a voyage to
the East”, Wallace praised. However, not
many share Alfred Wallace’s view.
“Stinks like hell, but tastes like heaven”
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Botany
certainly didn’t mince words when it comes
to describing bombacaceae durio
zibethinus.
The fuss about eating durian is legendary.
Mind you, even the smell has “flavour”.
Funny thing is, most westerners with a
liking for strong cheese would freak out
with one sniff of the fruit. “More like
eating a combination of rotting onions and
bananas”, they say.