I found my hedgehog frozen, shivering in the vast produce section of Fei Long Market, on 8th Avenue in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. Tiny crystals of frost nestled between the prickles. It joined my bag of bitter melons and mustard hearts and stem lettuce.
At home, I banished the durian to the cold terrace overnight, in case its infamous smell evicted us in the wee hours. And the next day I let it thaw at room temperature.
By this time I could smell it. To me, it’s not offensive at all. It’s more scent than smell – strong, but in a tropically assertive and suggestively layered way. Like truffles. But not. The Frenchman disagrees completely: It smells like trash, he offered, when I held it under his long French nose. Well, I said, I’m about about to make some trash ice cream.
He backed away.
In Manhattan’s Chinatown I’ve bought durian by the wedge from a sidewalk fruit vendor, who also provided a spoon to attack its custardy innards. The whole, heavy fruit, sealed in serious prickles, looks intimidating. But as mine thawed it split helpfully at the tip. Steadying the durian with an oven-mitt-clad left hand I wiggled a sharp paring knife into that crack and followed it, slicing towards the stem. The leathery skin gave way surprisingly easily.
The knife repeated that pattern, tip to stem, until the durian fell into five parts, each with double rows of segmented, custard-soft pulp, each segment hiding an enormous seed.
I ate a couple of segments, the flavor very strong and very rich. Also very more-ish. But my mission was ice cream, to see if I could recreate the best ice cream I can remember eating, from the tiniest Thai restaurant, now very much a memory, on 4th Street (or was it 8th…) in the East Village. That place taught me a lot about food.
Instant pudding, prior to freezing: durian and yuzu.
I had frozen the bowl of the ice cream maker overnight. Instead of cream, I added half-and-half, one cupful to the two cups of pulp. No sugar. In 20 minutes, it was close to frozen.
And there you have it. Durian ice cream (with yuzu zest atop). It was very, very good.
A pint went to Burmese and Hungarian friends in Prospect Heights, on the other side of the park. A pint went into me. The Frenchman wanted nothing to do with it.
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