Campedak 1

Today I wandered down to the fruit shop, to see what they had on offer for me. I fancied making some iced avocado juice to counteract my rather poor diet. This fruit seems to have a very short season, as there were none on display. My second choice was papaya, unfortunately they were looking rather diminutive and very sad, I guess this is not papaya season either. The quoted price for the mini papaya was a bit rich too, normally twice the length, which would mean 8x the volume, would be roughly the same price.

There was a good selection of different types of banana, a few trays of mango. Also on display were various types of melon, pineapples, star fruit, oranges, several apples, a root of some description and a tray of small guava, which make a very nice fruit drink.

Also in abundance was a rather strange looking fruit, with a spiky appearance. It definitely was not durian, but judging from the heavy, sweet aroma in the air, I suspect that it was a member of the same family of fruits. This was one of the unknown fruits that I had failed to try in all my time in Indonesia and after taking an up close sniff of one, I remembered why. With no other blips planned for the day, I decided to take one on the chin or should I say ?in the belly? for my fellow blippers.

I caught the attention of my fruity fruiterer and expressed interest in this unappetizing looking growth. I did manage to extract some basic information from the charming young lady. The fruit was called a cempedak, pronounced ?chempedack?. It was indeed a fruit and does not require cooking. I questioned the heavy sweet smell, she muttered something and smiled at me, with a rather mischievous twinkle in her eye which made me feel a touch apprehensive about this up and coming culinary expedition.

One reason that I don?t like buying fruit, is because experience is necessary to choose the best specimen. For example, when examining papaya, I see people slapping the fruit and listening to the sound or sniffing the end of a mango. I have tried all the above and am still none the wiser. My hostess, realizing that I was woefully out of my depth (I love playing the helpless male card), started sniffing all the cempedak on display and made an educated selection for me.

The fruit was not cheap, I paid Rp30,000 which is about US$3.00 or £2.00, so the cempedak would be considered a treat on the Indonesian table, costing a good chunk of a days wages. We will find out whether I consider it a treat tomorrow, as I feel there is another blip to be had here. The nefarious fruit is now fermenting in my fridge, as I prefer my fruits cold. Fortunately, the refrigerator was empty, otherwise I suspect all the contents would taste of cempedak.

It would be very easy to Google this fruit and find out everything about it, but I thought it would be fun to explore this one as a total novice. So tune in tomorrow for the cempedak sequel (Sparky).

Dave