Flowers bloom…

The durian trees are flowering…again! We have not come to the end of the current season and the flowers are making their appearance at the markets here already. It sure looks like there will be a bountiful harvest around the end of the year or early next year.

Many may love the fruit to bits, willing to fork out a fortune for them, but they may not have seen the trees, much less the flowers, I’m sure. I am not really a fan of the fruit and will not go out and buy to eat, RM50.00 for 3 at the Selangau market the other day (not too sure what the current prices here in Sibu are), but I will do that when it comes to the flowers…

My sister bought two big bags full at RM1.00 each at the Dewan Suarah (Civic Centre) market the other morning and that was extremely cheap. Usually, we would have to fork out at least RM2 for that amount and a lot more if they have had the anthers removed.

Yes, that is the chore one would have to endure before cooking and enjoying the flowers, removing the anthers…

– those little things at the end that resemble tiny cauliflowers and not only is it tedious and time-consuming, the flowers, your hands and everything must be dry or they would turn sticky and you might as well throw it all away. That is why if it rains the night before, there is no point at all collecting the flowers as there will be that gooey glue-like stuff all over the flowers that would render them unsuitable for consumption. Some will remove them for you and sell but of course, that comes at a price and not a small one at that.

It took me less than an hour to remove the anthers…

…of the flowers in one bag – the petals are edible too but since there were a lot of the remaining stamen or filament, I did not bother to keep much of those as one would have to unroll them one by one to make sure there are no anthers lurking inside as that would render the dish kind of starchy and not nice at all.

There are different ways to cook them. I know many cook some kind of curry with it and an aunt of mine once used them to make the nyonya-style acar (pickle) but usually, we would just fry them with sambal udang kering (dried prawns) the same way we fry kangkong (water spinach) but my missus went a step further and added a bit of mother tumeric (kunyit) and this was what we ended up with from one bag…

…which we gave to my mum to enjoy.

We fried the other bag with lots of pounded chili added…

…for ourselves and needless to say, we enjoyed it a lot!

Another fruit that is in season right now is the terbulus or buah engkala…

…in our local Malay. I managed to buy a basketful for RM4.00 at the Selangau market that day, at least RM5.00 at the Sibu market, and yes, they were really very very good – so sweet and creamy…and yes, we do eat the skin as well – very good roughage, if you get what I mean. Hehehehehe!!!! For the uninitiated who have neither heard or read of nor seen the fruit before, you can click this link to see my blogpost about it sometime ago.

Speaking of the Selangau market, I managed to get this…

…from there too the other day. The ones here are different from those in the peninsula, it seems – those there are only good for cooking curry, they tell me and the difference lies in their diet. If I can get hold of a good one here, I would cook soup with it…

…and enjoy the delightful fragrance and taste. Yes, we have good ones and not so good ones depending on what they have been eating and the best ones would be during the fruit season – no price for guessing what they had been feasting on…and also during the engkabang (illpenut) season when they would be very fat and very very nice.

I guess some/many of you are not familiar with all these things but never mind. You saw it first right here at https://suituapui.wordpress.com! LOL!!!