Last week someone at work ( Thanks Danh! ) gave me a stinky durian fruit to try.
Oh my! Even after it had been kept in the refridgerator at work in a sealed solid plastic box and wrapped around with two plastic bags, once the package was removed from the coolness, the smell was noticeable. It was noticeable and it was VERY BAD.
As others have described it before me, it smelled like something had died and was rotting, but with a hint of mustiness - like this thing had been rotting for a long long time. And the smell is strong, almost overpowering in what can only be described as its foulness.
So I drove the durian home and put it in my freezer ( as wrapped ) and inside a further small sealed cooler.
The next day, I transferred it to the main part of the refridgerator to thaw it out ( it had frozen solid ) and I went to work, with the intention of eating it that night.
When I got home, my refridgerator upper shelf smelled real bad.
So I put the cooler in the car along with a bottle of soda and drove out to a local park with the intention of eating this foul smelling thing as far from people as possible. In Indonesia, you can't take these things into hotels or on public transport. I didn't need my neighbors complaining to the Home Owners Association.
When I got to the park and opened up all the packaging, the smell was horrible, putrid and really unpleasant. But I persevered, unwrapped the very very soft fruit ( Hmm ripe! ) and without breathing in through my nose, I took a big bite.......
It was wonderful - just as some colleagues described - like a sweet pudding, with a hint of garlic and onion. Somehow the lovely taste completely negated the smell. While eating it, I had no sense of the rotten smell at all. The taste was all pervasive and actually, pretty damn great.
As you can see below, I ate it all up.....
Andrew Zimmern on the show "Bizarre Foods" has totally fallen in my estimation - he spat it out after one taste and said "never again".
I think the people who loathe this fruit somehow either physically still smell it while eating it or, and this is more likely, they come in predisposed to not liking the taste because the taste and the smell MUST be connected right?
Except, in the weirdest of ways as I can attest, the smell and the taste are not connected at all.
What a great experience this was.
PS I left the little cooler in my car. Four days later, someone remarked while putting a tennis racket in the trunk, "What is that smell?". I grinned inanely.
And the smell in the refidgerator? That went away when I stirred the open container of baking soda for a bit.
