Thursday, June 15, 2006

The Rambutan


Thailand has many interesting fruits. During my last 10 months here, I will try to highlight some of them as they come into season.

Shown in this picture is the lovely rambutan. Robert once described it as a red fruit with green hair! I usually use the prongs of my fork to slice it open around the middle (though most people use their thumbnails), until out pops a white, football-shaped sweet fruit with a big seed in the middle. It can be a bit difficult to eat sometimes – I’ve had more than one fly out of my fingers and onto the floor – but it’s quite tasty, and rather festive, too.

(The other fruits are oranges, which are green in Thailand, and some other sweet-sour thing that grows in the forest that I didn’t like very much.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is all very interesting! Thanks for all your updates on the little and big things about Thai life. It is quite the adventure you are having over there.

Stacey Pelika said...

Are 'oranges' called 'greens' in Thai?

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that oranges' skin turn orange because of cool nights and a chemical change. I'm assuming that since Thai falls are warm, oranges never have the chance to turn orange, but are ripe when "green." You can read the exact explanation in John McPhee's book aptly named "Oranges."