Jackfruit and Seafood; the 'farang' tastes Thailand

January 3rd, 2008
We're back in Phetburi, our home-base town, after the Xmas/New Year break. This is a 'proper' Thai town, not catering to tourists but to Thai people; here there is no internet place I've yet found with a microphone headset so I can use Skype.com to make phonecalls, however, this nice guy who runs a little internet place just 2 mins walk from us, who's called Adneg, has said in a few days he'll get me a headset, he's already checked out Skype this morning and downloaded the software; this is wonderfully kind of him; hopefully I'll be able to make calls by some time next week. We'll see what 'a few days' means in Thailand. (Report, Jan 16th: it really was only a few days, 3 or 4.)

So far Thais areunbelievably prompt, usually an unnerving 5-10 minutes early, but thatcould be just the school teachers. This makes any habitual or unexpected tardiness on our group's part rather embarrassing.

I have had time for the first part of today for peace andrefreshment. I went for a walk to the military base by the river, where they let you walk among their trees and lawns, as it's the site of one ofthe past king's palaces; I explored a new part of town and found someChinese Buddhist temples (which were locked), got stared at a lot,explored a fantastic food market I'd not seen before that, except for plastic, must have looked like it does now for many centuries, and bought a breakfast of Jackfruit (which needs a more elegant name...let me find out the Thai name....khe-nun. Not much more elegant.) The market was mostly seafood and vegetables;there are umpteen fruits and vegetables here that I don't recognize and have no context for; I can't tell if they're a fruit or a vegetable, or what on earth you might do with them. These range from ones that were on the far edges of my awareness before, like jackfruit, longan, durian, dragonfruit and pomelo, to others so strange that I can't remember them at all; some bizarre and some so bland-looking that they might as well be potatoes, but are clearly not. There are at least 4 very common but very different kinds of bananas, all incredibly more delicious than what we have in Europe. But I was told yesterday that there are many tens of typesof banana, including lots of different flavours and colours, in Thailand alone.

The Thai teachers took us out for dinner last night: seafood on the beach. Honestly, I thought most of it was pretty disgusting. I've discovered (probably thanks to Mom's lifelong aversion to it) that seafood is the one food-type that I really don't like, other than liver, kidney and offal. We had mussels, which were pretty gross, squid, which was more visually and conceptually disturbing than anything else as the taste wasn't strong, prawns, which I've grown used to and can palate, sea catfish, which tasted OK but is a bottom feeder and I couldn't help thinking of the pollution, and, on another occasion, octopus (fortunately deep fried and dried so not too bad) and clams (apparently same as cockles) which were worse than mussels. Frankly, I'd rather just not have to deal with any of these alien foods. Some of them tend to come with spicy sauces, luckily, which disguise some of their inherent nauseagenesis.

I should add that I was trying to be as open minded as possible and did at least try everything.

My breakfast, however, was a lot better than my dinner. This morning I procured, by luck, 20 Baht of a particularly good Jackfruit. I skulked past my roommates and hid on the upstairs balcony to avoid sharing any and to savour it in undisturbed rapture. The jackfruit is worth describing. It's hard to liken it to anything else. In outer appearance, it's ugly. It's huge--about 2 feet long, give or take a foot of variation, and mottled mouldy green, covered with small scale-like bumps, making it look like a reptile. It's about 8-9 inches wide. I suppose it looks like a gigantic, elongated lychee, but green-brown.

Inside, it has a white inedible pulp that cradles bright yellow-orange fruit flesh in units the size of a kiwi, that are peeled out by hand from the rest of the fruit. These edible parts look like fleshy orange flower petals, and each piece closes around a large (1-inch diam roughly) stone. When you buy jackfruit on the street the stones have been removed and you just buy the delicious petal-like flesh part. Its taste and texture are, quite simply, orgasmic.

I ate my bagful this morning slowly, savouring each peace with awe, wondering how I would describe the experience. To liken it to anything belittles the flavour of jackfruit, but I'll do so seeing as you don't have one to try. The flavour is exotic and tropical to a Western palate. It tastes like the most delicious flower smells; perhaps honeysuckle. It has all the deliciousness of the best pineapple with a little mango thrown in and then the delicate perfume of something akin to lychee. It is juicy but firm at the same time: The texture is like a lover's lips, which adds a special element to the eating. The texture is somewhat like mango, but without any of the stringiness; firmer than papaya and without the risk for powdery dissolving. It's smoother than peach, less watery than plum, less slippery than mango. No matter how warm the fruit is, jackfruit always feels refreshingly cooling.

After my fruit breakfast this morning, I felt, for the first time in a while, really nurtured by my food. It was enough to move me to a religious kind of gratitude to the universe for this wonder: the jackfruit.