Toddy Palm

I always really enjoy the fruit in Southeast Asia and am surprise that each time I go to Thailand there is something that I have never tried before. On this recent trip I tried 2 new types of fruit. One I had read about before on another blog called Nipa Palm. I did not take a picture of this fruit so you will have to go to the link or do a search if you want to see a picture. The fruit was in a sort of sugar water and I seemed to only taste the sweet water and the fruit did not seem to have much taste. I was not that impressed with this fruit but it was still fun trying something new.

The other fruit that was new to me has the English name of Toddy Palm.

I have not seen this fruit in the shell but only like the above picture with a light tan outside skin and then white in the center. It is my understanding that it looks similar to small coconut on the plant. I tasted the fruit the first time with the tan skin on and it was rather bitter and I did not like it at all. Na (my girlfriend) told me it is better without the skin and peeled one for me. I tried this and it did not have the bitter flavor but like the Nipa Palm it seemed to not have a lot of flavor. One that I ate also had a liquid in the center but it seemed to just be water.

This is Na peeling or skinning the fruit. Hard at work all for my enjoyment.

This is not a picture of new fruit to me but from my office after returning from vacation. At work we take turns bringing in a cake. The idea is to bring in something homemade from your home country. We have a real international mix of people and it is interesting trying the different things people bring in. I am not much of a cook and hate it when it is my turn. I decided to try and bring some fruit back from Thailand that are not very common in Holland. It turned out really well with a lot of people enjoying the fruit and got me out of trying to bake something.

The fruit was around 7.7 pounds 3.5 kilos in my carry on. In the back are Duku small brown and has a citrus taste, and you eat the white inside. Rambutan red and spiky looking and taste like a lychee, again eat the white inside but the spikes are soft and easy to peel. Mangosteen that is purple or black outside and you eat the white inside. It is super sweet and what you eat looks like a clove of garlic. In the front was a little bit of Guava, green and it was really good. It is a hard fruit like an apple but it did not travel well and was sort of soft and mushy but was a lot sweeter than I am use to with Guava. The guava was really really good and disappeared fast. The last red fruit is called a rose apple.