Participants listening to the briefing
I have just come back from a most enjoyable durian feast for 2008. The quality of durian this year is one of the best. There were about thirty participants for the 28 June feast, which is the first of two durian feasts I am organising this year.
The weather that day was excellent. It was blue sky when my wife and I left our house to go for the feast in Balik Pulau. It had been raining for a few days at the start of the week, which worried me a bit, as too much water would affect the quality of durians. But as luck would have it, the rainy spell came to an end towards the end of the week, and by Saturday, the durian feast day, the weather was perfect.
I decided to take the south coastal road to Balik Pulau, passing through the small villages of Sungai Batu, Teluk Kumbar, Genting, and even made a detour to Pulau Betong - I always loved to explore, and take every opportunity to do it. Today I "killed two birds with one stone", doing a bit of exploration while also attending the durian feast. I made sure my cellphone was on so that participants who are not familiar with the location can get hold of me.
I am pleased to see that the orchard had a good supply of durians waiting for us. The floor all along the wall was lined with durians. They were not heaped over each other, but placed all in a single layer on the floor. All the durians were collected early the same morning, so they are the freshest with good aroma.
The feast started at 11:00am with a briefing session on how to recognise and choose good durians. We were taught what are the elements that affect the quality of durians, and how to know whether a durian is good. I always loved to hear this briefing, although I have heard it every year, as it gives me a refresher. This is one of the reasons I chose to hold my annual durian feast at this particular orchard, rather than any other: the lessons provided is the most professional. You are not left to your own devices.
When the briefing was done, everybody was eager for their first taste of the durian. The first batch to be opened was the Khun Poh Ang Bak, a durian that was prize winning in 1991. It has beautiful golden flesh, and was a really good start for the feast.
The Khun Poh Ang Bak
After all of us have tasted the Khun Poh Ang Bak, the next batch of durians opened was the D604, which I also liked very much. It is a sweetish durian, and I have to say I love sweet durians. We got to try the D604 from different trees, some only 15 years old and one which is 60 years old. The older the tree, the better the durians, and the 60-year-old tree, well kept all these years, produced vintage-quality durians.
Next came D600, which I found to be pretty dry and not really my favorite. There was also a small selection of D2 which I enjoy very much too. Then came the Hor Loh, the durian that looks like water gourds. It is very soft, and quite bitter. I like the bitterness of the durians - it is certainly not like the bitterness of better gourds, that I can assure you.
The star of the show was the Ang Heh durian, a prized and very expensive durian. It has a delicate flesh that almost melts in your mouth, very soft and with a bitter sweet taste. I had the opportunity to taste some vintage Ang Heh - the skin has a blue-black tinge to it, which is highly prized, which you would learn to appreciate once you have tasted it. I only wished for a bigger stomach because I would have wanted to eat more, but there simply was no more room in me.
In addition to the durians, we were also provided free rambutans and mangosteens to eat to our hearts' content, but I didn't touch any of them - I need all the room in my stomach for the durian!
After we have eaten all that we can consume, some of the participants buy the durians to take home. That way, they get to share these wonderful branded durians with their loved ones back home, or continue the indulgence themselves. It is certainly cheaper, however, to join the feast, as you get to try more varieties of durians at a reasonable price. The orchard provide good-quality brown paperbags for you to bring your durians back.
After the feast, the owner took us for a walk around the orchard. In addition to the durian trees, we also saw soursoup (durian belanda), sour lemon, star fruit, mangosteen, nutmeg, rambutan, custard apples (nona) and jackfruit trees, among others. The path is lined with groves of lemon grass, an organic method of repelling mosquitoes. The owner pointed out that the farm is kept organic without the use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers. The reason is, by keeping things organic, it encourages insects to thrive, which draws birds into the orchard. By maintaining the ecology, the durian trees themselves are kept healthy. We were shown the sixty-year-old durian tree. It was planted by the owner's father, who bought the piece of land for just five hundred ringgit, but is now worth a fortune.
Very soon, the day was coming to an end as we climbed up the slope from the durian orchard back to our cars. I thought to myself, "Oh, how nice it is to own a durian farm!" But then again, I don't think I would enjoy having to maintain one, although durian orchards make good money today. I can see there's a lot of hard work to be done on the farm. Well, I'll just have to make do with enjoying the durians at my AsiaExplorers Durian Feast every year!
The owner of the durian orchard showing us how to identify good durians.
The participants were amused when the orchard owner compared durians to people. When they are young and pretty, they have smooth-skin flesh. But when they have gotten old, the skin becomes wrinkled. In the case of durians, the old, wrinkled ones are the best ones.
Durians hanging on the trees in the orchard.
The soursoup or durian belanda
The custard apples or nona
Lemon grass, or serai is grown along the path as a natural mosquito repellant.
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