When the immigration official at the airport read where I was staying on my entry card, he got very excited. "You must try the famous fish there!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean the durian fish?" I asked. "Yes, yes, you like it?!" he asked happily.
I can say, I do like it: Ikan patin tampoyak - "ikan" is fish, "patin" is the kind of fish, and "tampoyak" is a durian paste.
How does it smell? Like durian! How does it taste? I expected to taste only durian, but the one I had was also very spicy, and the fish was very tender. Unlike a lot of catfish I've had before, this one had few bones, so it was much easier to eat than I though it would be. We were also lucky to get to the restaurant on a slow day - usually the durian fish there is sold out first thing.
It was delicious!
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2 comments:
That dish looks fantastic!
Durian truly amazes me from an evolutionary perspective. Its shell is hard, spiky, a pain in the butt to open, and could probably be used as a weapon. It smells like a cadaver, like garbage you forgot to take out before going on vacation for a week. Everything about it would have been a cue to mankind to stay away and seek another food source.
And yet it has got to be one of the most sublime fruits I've ever tasted. So much complexity packed into what is essentially a tiny nucleus to the overall size of the shell.
While I'm sure that over the centuries 99 out of 100 attempts at eating something that looks and smells like Durian risked the health of the forager that ate it, I will be forever grateful to the intrepid soul who was just hungry and desperate enough to take a chance on Durian.
an australian friend provides the example of Castanospermum australe, which is very poisonous unless prepared at length for human consumption. his question: how many people died preparing it improperly before the magic formula to prepare for safe human consumption was hit upon? amazing.
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