The Fruit Explorer Encounters the Rambutan

To All,

The plant world outdid itself when it invented the rambutan, which looks like a cross between a sea creature, a cactus, and a disease-producing microbe. Alternatively, it looks like something the cat coughed up. I bet the first time a rambutan was eaten by a human was because somebody lost a bet. The rambutan takes the prize so far for the most expensive fruit per pound at $9.99/pound at Whole Foods. (On Amazon two pounds of rambutan cost $27.95.) I sorted through the rambutan heaped up in the Whole Foods exotic fruits aisle and picked out four likely looking specimens, though I had no idea what to look for. (Later I learned that the ideal is bright red with green tips on the little hairs, though this doesn't matter that much.) Each rambutan is about the size of a golf ball, and mine cost about 78 cents each. While my rambutan came from Guatemala, this fruit originated in Southeast Asia. "Rambutan" in Malaysian means hair. Its Vietnamese name means messy hair. While exotic to us, the rambutan is like the apple of Southeast Asia.

      

While it's a puzzle how to approach a monstrosity like this, it turns out that this fantastic fruit is surprisingly easy to eat. For a good video that lasts less than two minutes, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj84UpZg0cg. You just cut around its equator with a knife, and the outer, hairy part peels off with no difficulty. (If you have no knife and are in a hurry, you can bite it open. The little hairs are not hazardous.) There is a large, white, moist, egg-shaped fruit under the peel; there is a biggish seed in the center, but it is easy to deal with. One option is to eat the fruit like a tiny ear of corn. Another option is to bite or tear the fruit to open it up and then peel the fruit away from the seed. There are other ways, but the message is that you can't go wrong with this forgiving fruit. Below you see pictures of my four rambutan in various phases of being prepared. (Tyrannosaurus rex for scale.) 

      

After cutting them up, the little hairs were all over the place. Avoid rambutan if you are allergic to little hairs.

The fruits have the same color, texture, size, shape and overall feel as the lychee nut. In fact, they are in the same family, and once the peel is removed the resemblance is striking. As for taste, the rambutan goes down very easily with a very pleasing flavor, somewhat milder than that of lychee nuts.

The verdict: This fruit not only has an inviting flavor but is fun to look at, play with, and prepare. The killer drawback, however, is the price. While comparable to lychee nuts in terms of the pleasure provided, each rambutan costs about six times as much as a lychee nut. It is hard to justify such extravagance.

The seeds can be cooked and eaten. I did not try this since I only had four seeds.

For such a showy fruit, the flower is surprisingly subdued. The first picture below shows a flower cluster with a pollinator. The second picture gives a better sense of a rambutan tree in full bloom.

   

There are more than 200 rambutan cultivars. Common goals of cultivars with most plants are properties like shelf life, shippability, and flavor, but with rambutan one of the main goals is to keep the height of the trees under fifteen feet to facilitate the harvest. This approach has produced the rambutan hedge. Imagine your yard surrounded by a rambutan hedge. Your neighbors, stuck with their fuddy-duddy privet, would be green. (Before you succumb to this fantasy, however, read the next paragraph.)

      

It might occur to you to plant rambutan in your yard since its yield of eight tons per acre, at $9.99/pound would greatly augment your retirement income. This plan will, however, require you to move to Central or South America since rambutan only flourishes within 12 to 15 degrees of the equator. Even Florida is too frosty for this plant, which can't take temperatures below 48 degrees F.

This showy fruit has caught the fancy of Internet experts, and there is an extraordinary variety of rambutan videos. You can use the link above to locate them. I find the ones in languages that I cannot understand especially riveting. An example is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdaoTWZozA, which is perhaps in Hindi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0zbVvdVt4 eschews education and concentrates solely on giving the artist's view of rambutan.

The pictures below show rambutan, a favorite of animals, being eaten by orangutan, parrot, tapir(?), and woodpecker.

         

Rambutan is a happy fruit, as shown in the pictures below. If you eat rambutan, you, too, will be happy.

          

You will recall from the report on lychee nuts that it is considered proper to peel and eat a lychee nut while in the grocery store. This same rule applies to the rambutan. In the picture below you see a dignified woman sampling a rambutan. (How many of the fruits in the background can you identify? The Fruit Explorer's work is never done.)

Your party tip takes advantage of the fact that animals love to eat rambutan. Take your guests to a petting zoo and give them a supply of rambutan. The animals will crowd around, and your guests will come to understand the deep commonality between animals and man and will experience the unity of all life. For years afterward your guests will remember your party and how it made them feel at one with nature.

Rambutan plays well with other fruit, as demonstrated by the pictures below.

• Banana.
• Jack fruit
• Star fruit
• Unidentified fruit
• Dragon fruit

         

   

Rambutan is used in various food and drink preparations, including one available at Trader Joe's.

         

Artists have made use of rambutan in many different ways, as the pictures below attest.

                        

The latest addition to my bucket list is to get a rambutan hat.

Fruit Explorer Miscellany III

To All,

Here is another installment of follow-ups on previous e-mails as well as miscellaneous fruit thoughts.

Consider a small herd of cows that has been kept in the barn all winter and fed hay. In the spring they are released from the barn, and the gate to their pasture is opened. The cows, who have been penned up all winter eating dry food, stampede into their lush pasture bellowing with joy. That is what I was like when I re-entered Market Basket. Against all expectations, the employees triumphed over the bosses, and Market Basket has apparently come back to life in its traditional form.

The site http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch71.html, has the following to say about the ancient Greek and Roman view of garlic.

The Greek citizenry, especially the aristocracy, firmly rejected garlic and found its smell repugnant. Anyone smelling of garlic was considered vulgar and was prevented from entering the temples. However, in Aristophanes' play Wives at the Feast of Thesmophores, the women who were cheating on their husbands found garlic the perfect cover-up for a night of indulgence. Contrasting the negative Greek attitudes, Aristotle listed garlic among the foods he considered aphrodisiacs.

Like the Greeks, the early Roman nobility did not embrace garlic in their own diets but considered the herb worthy only of being fed to the laborers and slaves, to give them strength and vigor. Any man smelling of garlic was considered of low breeding. Horace, Roman lyric poet and satirist (65 to 8 BCE), said of garlic in his Epodes, it is "more poisonous than hemlock." Yet, Julius Caesar, Roman general, politician, and writer (100 to 44 BCE) was said to indulge his love of garlic without hesitation.

This is disappointing. It suggests that I will not be able to realize my dream (May 6) of acquiring a replica of a garlic press owned by a Roman senator.

You read on July 17 about my disenchantment with the sour (or bitter) orange. Carla pointed out that it is also called the Seville orange. Don't fall victim to this subterfuge of marketeers and be lured by this romantic name into letting this viper into your home.

I was pleasantly surprised when Mei-Ling revealed that in a jack fruit (August 4) even the stringy material between the fruits can be made into a tasty dish. Fruit, seeds, stringy material, wood--jack fruit approaches the green ideal of everything but the oink.

While reveling in the richness of the Internet, I had the thought that I might not be the only Fruit Explorer. Sure enough, there is a personality on YouTube called the Weird Fruit Explorer. At last count he had made 56 videos. I only watched a small portion of one of them since I did not want to be influenced by his approach or content. Here is his self-description

My name is Jared Rydelek. For a living I am a contortionist, fire eater and sword swallower; naturally, it gets boring. So I have taken up the hobby of traveling the world to try and find weird things to do and eat. On my channel I will be posting videos reviewing exotic fruit and the weirdest places I can find.

His YouTube home page is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsbD6Clp-ZPqKwXJR3V7DQ/about if you want to check out the competition.  This is just for your information; I give no positive or negative recommendation. Please do not tell me anything about him or his videos.

I have finally had the idea that will provide my first billion. I will found a string of restaurants called the International House of Jack Fruit.

Margy sent me this picture of an owl made of fruit. You will see that melons, the most carvable of fruits (September 7), are used for both the head and the belly. I conjecture that sculpture originated shortly after early man domesticated melons. Most of the scrapers found in archeological sites are probably melon carvers.

Star Fruit (March 17) is back in the stores after being away for six months. The first time I saw it after its return, all the star fruits were green. Being an experienced star fruiter, I passed them by. The second time some were full yellow with the beginning of brown spots on the ridges. Bingo. I snapped one up. It's good to see my old fruit friends reappearing as the great wheel of nature continues to turn. (Here's an example of why I like Market Basket. A star fruit costs $1.99 at Whole Foods and Stop&Shop but $0.99 at Market Basket.)

The first five seconds of a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44fgNndZ4DA on the ten most expensive fruits features this shot of a man and his jack fruit.

The man is saying, "Before long, it became an obsession and I was no longer a normal person." There is no context for this mysterious statement, which is not explained and which has no apparent relation to this video, which does not mention jack fruit. I wonder if another poor soul has been lost to jack fruit. Perhaps I should start a local chapter of Jack Fruit Anonymous.
You might complain that the "Medley of Melons" e-mail (Aug 26) contained a generic melon party tip and that the horned melon, that most unusual of melons, deserves its own, customized party tip. Here is a tip that takes advantage of the horned melon's jellied interior. Issue each guest a garbage bag with holes punched in it so they can wear it as a raincoat. Also give each guest a shower cap from the stock that you have brought back from stays at hotels. Finally, give each guest half of a horned melon. Before you know it, you will hear squeals of glee as a horned melon fight breaks out and your guests squirt each other with green slime. There is no need to intervene as each guest will quickly exhaust the ammo in the melon half. As a final touch, scrape out each guest's horned melon half and present it to him or her, saying that it is a shot glass. When your guests leave, you will hear them chuckling and saying how they can't remember when they had so much fun. Later, when they do shots, they will reminisce about your party and the only time in their lives when they were allowed to play a green version of paintball.
  

The Fruit Explorer Encounters a Casaba

To All,

While slinking through Whole Foods, I was drawn to yet another melon, the Casaba. This melon is round and yellow, with a bump of a topknot and somewhat wrinkled as though it were the repository of great wisdom. This melon weighed 4.48 pounds and cost $0.99 per pound. 

I went through my usual melon protocol and cut it in half and then quarters. The seed, which was collected in a star-shaped cavity in the center, is easily scooped out of the quarters with a spoon. I then cut it into eighths and found that it was easy at this stage to remove the rind with a steak knife. The pictures below show:

• The entire melon.
• The two halves of the melon.
• A half, a quarter with the seeds removed, and two eighths with both the seeds and the rind removed, with the removed rind behind the eighths.

      

I then sat down to eat my usual serving of a quarter of a melon. I lifted a slice to my mouth and took a big bite. The flavor was subtle. At first there was a whiff of honeydew taste, but as I continued, the taste seemed to take on a character of its own and did not decompose into a mixture of other melon tastes. After eating it I did not detect any augmentation of wisdom.

The verdict: With a faint though pleasing taste and the usual appealing melon texture, this is a worthwhile though uncompelling melon. The casaba, Christmas, and canary melons really are much the same in terms of the strength of flavor and texture, with there being slight variations in the flavor. James Bond could distinguish them in a blind taste test, but for normal purposes these three melons are interchangeable. It might be that you would choose among them on the basis of appearance. The Christmas melon has the comfort-look of a mini-watermelon, the canary melon is a bright, cheery yellow, and the casaba has its charming little topknot. Also, the Christmas melon tends to be a little smaller.

A previous melon party tip allowed your guests to paint. This party tip allows them to sculpt. Sit your guests down in front of the big screen and show them the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejv0eiFI8Hk. Then, sit them back down at the table, give each guest a melon and a carving knife, and ask them to follow the instructions in the video and to carve their melon into a fish. When all of the fish are carved, collect them together to simulate a melon aquarium. If you want an ecologically balanced wetland scene, show the videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc4fKYz95ao and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmHk9m0sobU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXzfRlSNOrY, which instruct your guests in how to carve swans, aquatic flowers, and sea shells from melons. Provide your guests with different melons so your flotilla of swans can by many-hued and your flower bed can be multi-colored. Finally, carve a boat in which to explore your aquatic ecosystem. Take a picture of this melon-inspired wetland scene so your guests will have a permanent reminder of your party. Later, your guests will silently thank you for revealing to them the artistic possibilities of fruit and for bringing out the inner artist within them.

   

      

   

Rick 

P.S. In the fish pictures above, the fruits surrounding the fish, from the inside out, look to me like oranges, kiwis, jack fruits, and strawberries. I'm not sure of the jack fruit. Can someone with a keener eye correct me?

P.P.S. Here are pictures that illustrate the casaba experience.

• The place of casabas among other melons.
• A recipe for casaba curry.
• A casaba dollhouse.
• A black and white drawing (labeled "Circa 1920") that shows a casaba that looks exactly like the one I ate. This has a very realistic depiction of the topknot.
• A cartoon from The New Yorker that features a casaba. In the long-standing New Yorker cartoon tradition, it is not funny.
• A graphic that shows the role of the casaba in world cinema.
• Kids bowling with casabas. From the picture I can't tell if they are playing tenpin or candlepin.
• Two casaba candles. You can get the green one at Walgreen's. For the yellow one, star fruit is seen as a selling point; clearly, this product is aimed at the fruit cognoscenti.
• One of the legion of cosmetics that uses casaba.