The humble durian is at the heart of The Durian Cookbook and features in every single one of the 70 recipes in the book. — HON SON/Pexels
In Malaysia, durian season is basically one long eat-fest. Perched along roadsides, on street corners and in durian shops across the country – durian traders display their wares, sweat glistening as they hack into rotund spiky spheres, breaking apart the whole fruit to reveal hollows and chambers filled with fleshy durian orbs lined prettily inside. Often the smell alone is enough to evoke a visceral reaction – from oohs and aahs of pleasure to visible salivation.
Durian flesh itself can vary – from a burnished orangey hue akin to a glorious sunset all the way to plebeian egg yolk shades and everything in between. Tastes also run the gamut – from thick, luscious and intensely creamy to thinner, runnier flavours with a less opulent mouth feel.
Regardless of size, taste or even texture, one thing remains immutable: in Malaysia, durian is king and everyone wants a piece of it.
And yet, while we enjoy the fruit as is, it doesn’t really get utilised much outside of this – with the exception of durian-themed desserts (think durian puffs, durian cheesecakes) and tempoyak (fermented durian).
Many Malaysians are purists in that sense – why dilute and douse the natural wonders of durian with alien ingredients and concepts? In the food world, eating durian is the equivalent of celebrating natural beauty – thorns and all.
The Durian Cookbook pays homage to durian but also offers ways to celebrate it in meals instead of simply on its own.
But the introduction of The Durian Cookbook is set to challenge that notion and perhaps change mindsets.
“When I shared the idea of a durian cookbook with Malaysians, they were like, ‘I don’t need a freaking cookbook. I just want to eat the durian fresh’
“But I told them, ‘You’re not our target market.’ My target market is people around the world who are durian-averse or durian-ignorant or durian-curious, but for whom eating durian fresh might be a little bit too big of a step to reach out.
“So, like I said, The Durian Cookbook, in that sense, is like a bridge to help to introduce the world to durian flavours, just like the world’s very familiar with vanilla and strawberry and chocolate flavours,” says Jackie M. Tang, the co-author of the book.
How did it come about?
The book is a collaborative effort put together by the Masters of Malaysian Cuisine, essentially a group of chefs that banded together during the Covid-19 pandemic. The collective is made up of eight Malaysian chefs – Tang, Johari Edrus, Dato Ismail Ahmad, Dave Murugaya, Debbie Teoh, Rene Johari, Zaleha Olpin and Bob Adnin. The collective was founded by Tang as a means of dispelling myths about Malaysian food and championing the country’s rich and diverse culinary heritage.
Tang is the brainchild and collaborative force behind The Durian Cookbook, which brought together eight different Malaysian chefs who came up with inventive recipes involving durian.
Tang is a professional cook who gave up a successful IT career to take up her parents’ hawker food legacy and has since grown her name in Australia and Malaysia.
“Yeah, I knew Chef Joe and I had interviewed Zaleha when the whole debacle about crispy rendang came out and I interviewed her for my platforms and shared it with people. But Chef Joe and I used to communicate online and he used to get really irate by these misrepresentations of Malaysian food by overseas chefs.
“I’ll give you an example. There’s an Aussie cooking show called Good Chef Bad Chef where this guy came to Malaysia and suddenly he was an expert in Malaysian cooking. And on television in Australia, he showed people how to cook nasi lemak, right?
“He said, ‘I’m gonna show you how to cook nasi lemak.’ And then he went ahead and cooked nasi goreng!
“So we already had that frustrating experience of seeing Malaysian food being messed around with. So when the Covid-19 lockdown happened, we started talking about ways we could continue to share Malaysian food,” explains Tang.
Those initial interactions resulted in the eight chefs bonding over food and sharing their recipes and tips on social media. Then after the effects of the Covid-19 started to wane and the world went back to normal, everyone started doing their own thing once again. Until The Durian Cookbook project came along.
Acclaimed local chef Johari Edrus is one of the chefs and recipe contributors in the book, sharing recipes like nasi durian and crab durian butter sauce.
“Essentially, first of all, we were approached by the director of the Sydney office of the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries (now the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security), as it was known at the time.
“And she said, ‘Do you have any ideas how we can promote a variance of durian in Australia and around the world?’ So I gave her all sorts of ideas, and one of them was a durian cookbook. And she liked the idea,” says Tang.
That initial kernel of an idea blossomed into a collaborative effort, with Tang roping in the other seven chefs to help put together the recipes in the book. The collaboration spanned many countries – Tang for instance is based in Sydney, Australia while Zaleha is in the United Kingdom and Rene works in Dubai.
While the Malaysian agriculture body provided some seed funding, Tang says this passion project was fuelled by a desire to introduce durian to a more international audience. As a consequence, all the collaborators put in their own money to keep the project afloat.
Challenges
Tang said although they put together the book relatively quickly, there were some hiccups on the road to completion. The biggest one was that they had to redo all the photography for the recipes.
“Our first print run is actually a different size. But we were doing everything sight unseen so while it was very beautiful we felt that the paper quality could be better.
The cookbook offers innovative ways to include durian in everyday meals, like this durian beef dendeng pictured here. — THE DURIAN COOKBOOK
“So we did a second print run and changed the size of the book so it was easier to ship and sturdier. And the first hurdle we ran into was that the original designer did not want to let go of the artwork, so we actually ended up paying someone else to redo all the photography!” says Tang.
In the chaos of putting together the second print run, there were some errors in page numbering and as a result, Tang says the team had to print a bookmark to point out some of these inconsistencies in page references. They also decided this warranted a price reduction, which is why despite being a better quality product, the cookbook is actually now cheaper than it was in its first print run.
The cookbook
Tang decided that in order to be a full-fleshed cookbook, there had to be at least 70 recipes in the book, divided up among the eight chefs. Everyone put in different recipe counts but eventually it came up to 70 and Tang says in the end, the chefs ended up contributing recipes that epitomised their own areas of specialisation.
“Rene is a Michelin trained chef, so everything he does is very elevated. And also because he’s been based in the Middle East for a long time, his food is very refined and with some Arabian influence.
“D
Anyone game for shepherd’s pie with a durian topping? — Photos: The Durian Cookbookebbie, she’s got the whole Nyonya market corner, right? And then Dave’s recipes are all vegan. So we kind of comfortably managed to just pull into our own little specialties,” she says.
The recipes are divided according to each chef’s contribution so you can clearly see who came up with what. I won’t lie, there are some downright odd recipes in the mix – like a recipe for durian meatball with cheese dip, a grilled sirloin steak with pink peppercorn durian sauce, creamy durian pasta and a Malaysian shepherd’s pie with a durian topping, to name a few.
And yet there are so many, many recipes that actually sound quite delightful – especially the ones that are a take on local classics or incorporate durian in sweet treats. Tang’s durian-filled fritters and durian pancake for example offer a simple way to incorporate durian into another receptacle or vehicle that enhance the overall flavour profile of durian.
Vegan chef Dave Murugaya’s recipes meanwhile cleverly play to durian’s strengths by utilising the king of fruits in a series of durian desserts like vegan kaya, vegan durian payasam gula Melaka and vegan cekodok durian.
Because of the presence of tempoyak in the Malay culinary world, durian slides in more effortlessly into many Malay recipes. Which is why these are the recipes that somehow have a more compelling presence in the cookbook.
Like Johari Edrus’ durian rice – a classic recipe from his grandmother; or Zaleha Olpin’s grilled fish with durian sambal (made with tempoyak); and Dato’ Ismail Ahmad’s range of tempoyak-infused sambals like sambal tempoyak daun (tapioca shoot and fermented durian sambal) or even tempoyak goreng ikan bilis (fried fermented durian with dried anchovies).
Dessert-themed durian options are popular in Malaysia, which is why vegan chef Dave Murugaya has expanded on that with a selection of recipes like these vegan durian cream puffs.
Overall, the book offers a thought-provoking culinary odyssey through the depths of durian fervour and fever. Except in this instance, it turns everything you know about durian into something far more complex and intriguing. Because by incorporating durian into various meals, it also gives Malaysians the opportunity to think about durian as more then the sum of its parts.
Because yes, you can enjoy durian as is, but the book also shows you that you can enjoy it in so many more ways than one. It is testament to this spirit of inventiveness that the book recently bagged first prize in the Fruits category at the World Gourmand Cookbook Awards.
“All the chefs involved in this book are very proud of our cuisine and our culture and we want to help put Malaysia on the map because I think Malaysia has such an incredible diversity in terms of food and in terms of our produce and all that, but a lot of our neighbouring countries get all the glory, you know.
So we want to really encourage the rest of the world to look at Malaysia and Malaysian durian in a different way,” says Tang.
The Durian Cookbook is priced at RM118 and available on www. duriancookbook.com.
