Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 154 posts

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#71

Post by markdown »

greggman3 wrote: post #69
reedlaw wrote: post #47

Dragon fruit can be grown in California, Florida, and Hawaii and is not "bland mush with tiny seeds that can require floss to dislodge". The author must have had a bad one. They can be extremely sweet. The seeds are so small that they go down without noticing and I've never had to use floss. My favorite is a variety with deep red flesh. Mangosteen is so far from its depiction---"to eat a pile of mangosteens is an exe…

I don't dislike Dragon Fruit but having had 30 or so of them in SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan) I've never had one that was "extremely sweet". All of them were relatively on the bland every place I had one. It's good to know they can be sweet but I'm curious why finding a sweet one is so rare. As for the seeds I agree. It's like eating kiwi seeds. Mangosteen is great! No idea why the author…

While my experience with dragonfruit are the same as yours, I've heard they can be sweet if allowed to fully ripen on the stem before harvest. This of course doesn't work for commercial production.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#72

Post by 3131s »

I live in Cambodia where all of these fruits are available, and more. I like every fruit mentioned, except salak, and eat many of them every day.

This author comes off as a deeply uncultured American giving a generic impression of a drunken 3-5 day visit to SEA. There are so many errors in this article it's unreal.

Jackfruit does not have a "jagged sheath" (that's durian).

Dragon fruit is only mushy when it's badly bruised or overripe, and there are other varieties that are sweeter and richer than the white variety.

Durian does not "stink of death".

Salak are normally imported from Indonesia, as far as I know. Maybe the author is thinking of salacca wallichiana, which is related but tastes very different?

Describing a langsat as a "demure cousin" of the lychee is a totally meaningless way of saying that they belong to the same order of plants.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#73

Post by philliphaydon »

greggman3 wrote: post #69
reedlaw wrote: post #47

Dragon fruit can be grown in California, Florida, and Hawaii and is not "bland mush with tiny seeds that can require floss to dislodge". The author must have had a bad one. They can be extremely sweet. The seeds are so small that they go down without noticing and I've never had to use floss. My favorite is a variety with deep red flesh. Mangosteen is so far from its depiction---"to eat a pile of mangosteens is an exe…

I don't dislike Dragon Fruit but having had 30 or so of them in SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan) I've never had one that was "extremely sweet". All of them were relatively on the bland every place I had one. It's good to know they can be sweet but I'm curious why finding a sweet one is so rare. As for the seeds I agree. It's like eating kiwi seeds. Mangosteen is great! No idea why the author…

> I don't dislike Dragon Fruit but having had 30 or so of them in SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan) I've never had one that was "extremely sweet". All of them were relatively on the bland every place I had one. It's good to know they can be sweet but I'm curious why finding a sweet one is so rare.

Our experience is vastly different!

While not a fan of dragon fruit, I do eat it relatively often as my wife loves it. We usually buy pre-peeled pack at the super market when we visit.

For me it is definitely sweet. Not 'extremely' but it's definitely sweeter than a good banana or royal grape. Definitely not bland at all. I don't think I've had a non-sweet version in any of the countries you listed.

Edit: I just had a thought. I always eat Purple dragon fruit, not the white one. Maybe that's the difference.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#74

Post by markdown »

ndespres wrote: post #64
markdown wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pawpaw fruit that taste like custard Do you mean pawpaw, or custard apple (aka sugar apple in the US)?

They are describing a fruit known in parts of the US as pawpaw and custard apple both. Never heard it called "sugar apple" but there are 2 different fruits known as custard apple so maybe you are thinking of a different one.

This is the one I meant: Annona squamosa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar-apple)

It's called custard apple in my country. We call papaya, pawpaw.

Any discussion of fruit needs to use their botanical names since they're called different things in different places.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#75

Post by markdown »

harikb wrote: post #13

As someone who grew up in southern India in a house literally surrounded by at least few dozens of these trees[1], most of them also hosting black pepper creepers, I wonder how this became Thai Fruit? Come on, we even have a western name! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit

Imagine being Chinese and having your fruit renamed something else by foreigners.

Aussies are trying this bullshit right now with a Bolivian fruit called achachairu. See how this entire article calls it a made up name. And this is supposed to be a news website: https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2014-06-19/gallery-achacha...

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#76

Post by rcpt »

These are all pretty easy to find in Los Angeles, New York, and the Bay. How many other things do you see if you actually venture to SE Asia?

Central America has all kinds of things that I never see here, eg. canistel or black sapote, as well as variants of mango, corn, and banana that don't sell in the US.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#77

Post by magnio »

3131s wrote: post #72

I live in Cambodia where all of these fruits are available, and more. I like every fruit mentioned, except salak, and eat many of them every day. This author comes off as a deeply uncultured American giving a generic impression of a drunken 3-5 day visit to SEA. There are so many errors in this article it's unreal. Jackfruit does not have a "jagged sheath" (that's durian). Dragon fruit is only mushy when it's badly b…

It puzzles me how the smell of durian, which I find very aromatic, can be disgusting to some people.

Also dragon fruit is a 'bland mush'? I've must have been eating the wrong fruit. There's also a red dragon fruit which is a little tastier.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#78

Post by Markoff »

unpopular opinion - durian is overrated, I don't get what's so special about it, even the smell is not really that big, people must have fancy noses if they think it's particularly smelly, some European cheeses are way more (unpleasantly) smellier

my favorite of exotic fruit is dragon fruit - looks nice, easy to consume with spoon, good flavor

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#79

Post by 3131s »

rcpt wrote: post #76

These are all pretty easy to find in Los Angeles, New York, and the Bay. How many other things do you see if you actually venture to SE Asia? Central America has all kinds of things that I never see here, eg. canistel or black sapote, as well as variants of mango, corn, and banana that don't sell in the US.

There are many more varieties, as you said. I am literally about 100 meters from maybe 5-6 varieties of bananas and 10-12 varieties of mangoes. There are 4 varieties of dragon fruit here too, all excellent.

The cheaper varieties of mangoes are similar to what Americans are familiar with, but much more consistent. Mangoes grow so readily here that in season I can get a kilo for $0.25 and they're always perfectly ripe. There is a more expensive variety that is purely sweet and has a more gelatinous texture, and it feels "decadent" in the same way that a rich chocolate cake does.

The bananas are way better, especially some of the smaller varieties that have a thicker consistency. There are cart vendors everywhere here that grill those small bananas and sell them on sticks.

And then there are many others in the markets, a lot of which don't have common names in English but all of them are great really. It's so cheap that in my diet I eat fruit instead of rice or bread as a carbohydrate source. Even most imported fruits are pretty reasonably priced, so you can still easily find things like apples, champagne grapes, cherries, etc.

Re: Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward

#80

Post by Markoff »

3131s wrote: post #72

I live in Cambodia where all of these fruits are available, and more. I like every fruit mentioned, except salak, and eat many of them every day. This author comes off as a deeply uncultured American giving a generic impression of a drunken 3-5 day visit to SEA. There are so many errors in this article it's unreal. Jackfruit does not have a "jagged sheath" (that's durian). Dragon fruit is only mushy when it's badly b…

never in my life i had mushy dragon fruit and ate it multiple times a week when lived in Asia for years, i like it cooled from fridge

I've never understood what's even stinky about durian, it just has its own odor like any other fruit, nothing deserving special treatment media give it, must be some durian wholesalers conspiracy trying to make it more interesting than it actually is

Post reply on HN