"Crazy Food Stuffs" Tutorial Part III: How to Open a Cempedak
TUTORIAL PART III: HOW TO OPEN A CEMPEDAK
Cempedaks (pronounced CHUHM-puh-dahk) are MASSIVE weird looking fruits.
The cempedak featured in this blog entry was the length of my whole forearm (elbow to fingertips), but I've seen cempedaks as big as 4 human heads put together! I can best describe the smell of unopened cempedaks as smelling like flammable gas (the sort that goes KABOOM! when exposed to naked flame). It stinks that bad. Poopy smell!
The fruit is also super sticky with sap on the outside...so opening it is a bit annoying.
People tend to like to eat this fruit, because its CHEAP and VALUE FOR MONEY
(i.e. it yields A WHOLE LOT of edible fruit)!
OKAY, LET'S OPEN IT! :D
(Note: Opening of fruit was done by my mom. haha!)
#1 Get yourself some newspaper to do the whole opening process on,
as well as a sharp knife and some oil (vegetable/peanut, doesn't matter).
Cover your hands and blade of the knife with oil, so that your hands don't get covered in gooey sap and the knife glides through the fruit casing more easily!
#2 Grab your stinky cempedak and sharp knife and cut deep lines from one end of the fruit to the other.
Cut maybe 6-8 deep lines around the fruit (same as before, from one end to the other) and make sure that the lines MEET at one end of the fruit. This MEETING of the lines is important, because this is the only way that you'll be able to pry the fruit casing open!
#4 On the end where all the cut lines meet...pry the opening wider until the casing is able to be ripped off in segments!
#5 RIP a segment of the casing off to reveal the edible cempedak fruits inside! :P
The smell of the fruit inside is completely different from the outside!
It's really hard to describe...but it smells really sweet and REALLY strong.
#6 Pluck out the fleshy inner bits and sort them out in a box/bowl for later.
To reach more of the inner fruit, tear off more of the segment casings.
#7 After ripping off more segments of the casing, you'll see how the inner fruits
actually grow out of the honeycomb-textured core of the fruit.
The core is actually quite soft and its connected to the stem of the whole fruit.
WEIRD-LOOKIN! :S
Pluck, pluck and PLUCK AWAY until there are no more fruits left to pluck!
#8 After all the cutting and plucking is gone, you'll be left with a whole heap of edible yummy things!
My mom says that when she was little, they use to deep-fry them to make "CEMPEDAK GORENG"...which basically means DEEP-FRIED CEMPEDAK (goreng means FRIED)...kind of like a fritter, I guess.
We might keep some to eat unfried, but I definitely want to give the fried ones a go! :P
#8 (IF EATING FRESH!) Pop a piece of cempedak in your mouth and eat off the fleshy stuff...spit out the seed!
The seed - which is super soft - can also be boiled with gula melaka (i.e. palm sugar) to make a sweeter dessert.
THE END
Coming soon:
How to Make Cempedak Goreng
Deep-frying pieces of cempedak fruit to make yummy fritters! :P
Lunch at Thai Express
Prawn toast, Nam Manao, Black Pepper Glass Noodles with Soft Shell Crab, Cold Seafood and Vermicelli Salad
A Trip to the Cardiac Centre
Getting my chest checked at the National University Hospital :(