Exotic Fruit Report, No. 8

It’s durian season in Thailand, which probably merits a post of itself, though right now I am just enjoying eating durian every day and mulling over the possibilities of a durian and coffee diet. Mangosteens have returned, mangoes are plentiful and cheap, and there are enormous maroon lychees. The return of the rainy season is good for fruit. A few stranger things are about: snake fruit have reappeared after a few months, custard apples are around, and from time to time you run across this thing, the santol:

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The santol is evidently cultivated in the Philippines. In Thai, it’s a krathon (กระท้อน) or a sathon (สะท้อน). If you cut it open, it looks like this:

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And the white very quickly turns reddish-brown:

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The taste is tart: imagine halfway between and apple and an orange, take away the sweetness, and you’re almost there. The texture is a little custard-like, a bit like a mangosteen. It is not the most delicious thing in the world; perhaps it’s not actually ripe yet? These are the sort of just desserts one consumes if one is learning about fruit from Wikipedia.

2 thoughts on “Exotic Fruit Report, No. 8

  1. If you can get to an iBerry ice cream parlor (I’ve only tried the one in Chiang Mai, but I know there are a number in Bangkok), you should try the Santol sorbet. Or, really, anything else they serve.

  2. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get around to this, but I finally made it to an iBerry a few weeks ago. Delicious! They were out of santol, but I tamarind and spicy green mango.

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