Skip to content

Recipes with durian flesh

3 recipes that use durian flesh, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Tempoyak, takes 20 minutes. It is most often cooked with coconut milk, egg yolk and fine sea salt.

Got a few things in the fridge? Search by everything you have

Bánh pía with durian and salted egg yolkDurian and egg yolk pastries

Sóc Trăng in the Mekong Delta is lined with shops stacking boxes of bánh pía for travellers to carry home, a legacy of the province's Teochew Chinese bakers. The pastry flakes into fine, papery layers around a dense mung bean paste perfumed with durian and hiding a whole salted egg yolk; they are eaten with hot tea at any time of day and given at Mid-Autumn. This home version uses vegetable shortening in place of the lard many bakeries use, which keeps it vegetarian. Chef's tip: keep the water dough and the oil dough at the same softness; if one is firmer, the layers tear when you roll and the pastry bakes up bready instead of flaky.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

TempoyakFermented durian

When the durian season peaks in Pahang and Perak, from June to August, there are always more fallen, over-ripe fruit than anyone can eat, and the surplus becomes tempoyak. The flesh is mashed with salt, packed into a jar (traditionally a clay tajau) and left for a few days until it turns from sweet and custardy to pale, sharply sour and powerfully aromatic. In Temerloh it is cooked into gulai tempoyak ikan patin, a yellow river-fish curry; elsewhere it is pounded with chilli into sambal tempoyak for raw ulam, or stirred into stir-fried greens. Abroad, frozen durian flesh from Asian grocers works well once thawed. The salt level is about 3% of the flesh (15 g to 500 g); do not cut it. Common mistake: letting water in from washed hands, a damp spoon or the outside of the husk, which invites mould; keep everything dry and press out air pockets. It is ready when the colour has faded to ivory, it smells sour and fruity rather than sweet, and it tastes sharply tangy. Chef's tip: everyday kampung durians make better tempoyak than prized varieties; their sharper flavour ferments well.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Durian pengatDurian in coconut milk

When the durian season peaks in Singapore from June to August, Peranakan families in Katong and Joo Chiat turn leftover or slightly overripe fruit into pengat, a thick, golden custard-like dessert of durian flesh cooked down in coconut milk with gula melaka and pandan. It is rich, creamy and boldly fragrant, with a caramel edge from the palm sugar and a little salt to balance it, and it is eaten warm or chilled in small bowls, or spooned over plain steamed glutinous rice or slices of white bread. The usual mistake is boiling the coconut milk hard, which splits it into oily curds; keep it to a lazy simmer. Chef's tip: mash half the durian and keep half in soft chunks, so you get both a smooth base and creamy pieces to bite into.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with durian flesh