Amazing Asia is home to over 400 species of edible fruit. Want to send your tastebuds on a journey? Gathered from the forests and farms of beautiful Asia, these savory fruits are ready for the tasting!

MANGO

By now, you may have tasted a luscious mango because this is one of the most widely eaten fruits from the tropics. Asian mangoes may range from yellow to pale green, and what’s likeable about this fruit is that it’s yummy when both ripe and unripe. To eat, cut the mango into three tasty parts by slicing lengthwise around the big seed. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

LYCHEE

Eaten from the can or fresh from the tree, lychees are guaranteed to tickle your tastebuds. With its unique flavor, it isn’t a surprise that China treats this as one of its most beloved fruits. In fact, legend has it that an emperor of the Tang dynasty lost his throne because he regularly gives his concubine fresh lychees at great expense from his people! Eat like royalty: choose a lychee with rosy looking skin, remove the stem and the rough skin, pluck and munch the fruit and spit the round seed out with flair.

RAMBUTAN

Have you seen this fruit? From the Malay word ‘Rambut’ meaning hairy, the rambutan is spiny and bristly, almost like spiky hair with too much gel! But don’t be deceived by its tough exterior. If you remove its rind with patience, you will discover its soft, sweet and juicy flesh. Kind of like a lychee but with more attitude.

STARFRUIT

How many stars do you rate a starfruit? Five, of course! With its five angled shape and distinct flavor ranging from delicately sweet to tantalizingly sour, the starfruit (or carambola as the Spanish call them) is currently becoming a favorite of fruit lovers around the world. No need to peel the skin so you could gobble them up one after the other like the rest of us!

POMELO

Imagine an orange. Now imagine it to be larger by at least 5 times and has thicker skin. Imagine peeling away the thick rind and seeing large segments and juice vesicles colored that may be colored red, pink, yellow or white and when you eat it, it tastes a bit like a grapefruit minus the sour and the bitter flavor. Now that’s no orange. Call it pomelo or pummelo or even Bali orange; this fruit is the one and only citrus grandis.

PAPAYA

If you want a fruit that’s practical, the papaya is the one to pick. When it is green and unripe, you could place them in salads like the people of Thailand do. When it is red and ripe, you could eat the flesh straight from the rind. You could even use the papaya itself as a container to hold boiled shrimp and pour dressing on it like those in Singapore. Now that’s one useful fruit!

DURIAN

Why mentioned last? It’s the smell of course! Someone mentioned that the infamous durian has “a faint aroma of bitter sweet butter scotch and almonds with a bouquet of wild honey and a hint of smoked oak”. Don’t be fooled; this fruit is banned in taxis, restaurants and hotels! However, if you hold your nose a bit and let your tastebuds do the talking, you will discover that this fruit is truly a delicacy. Never mind that sharp spines either. Encased within is a cream colored, custard like pulp with a flavor that will leave you bowing down to this king of fruits.

SATISFIED?

That doesn’t stop here! The fruity list goes on and on and on. Also, there is a lot of cool stuff that you could do with these fruits. You could eat them as they are, mix them with your food, turn them into salads, or use them as garnish or even as decorations for meals. There are a lot of recipes for Asian fruits and a single search brings you thousands of them to try out. Explore: your tastebuds will thank you for it.

Here’s something better: Explore Asia yourself. Board a plane right now. Why not? Your tastebuds have already been there.

Posted in Asia, Food

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Asia, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.