Longan Longings

Globalization has made it possible to get a lot of fruit year round. Australia, Africa, China enable us to have apples year-round, while American blueberries are replaced by Argentinean ones when the Pacific season has ended. It makes me a little sad, really. 

The year is no longer so neatly divided into food or fruit seasons any more. Mangoes are now good year-round, thanks to Australia (again), India, Thailand and Indonesia. Durians are not reserved for the dry season any more. 

So it was that I was glad to actually see a fruit I don’t see much of year round.  I used to love longans (also called mata kuching or dragon’s eye), and waited with eagerness for the lychee season because lychees always seemed to herald longans when I was growing up. Of late, however, I have eaten more canned longans than the fresh variety. Not by choice, really, they were served to me. I did not go out seeking them. 

Anyway, my favourite local fruit guy (as compared to the international or non-Asian fruit guy) had bunches of fresh longans at the night market today. They were RM6 a kilo. I bought a bunch for nostalgia and because Erin needs to know what food looks like in their natural state.

She was pretty interested. She liked the new taste, having only had canned longans before. She particularly liked the round, black seeds and had fun popping them into her cup of water. 

They're not very pretty, aren't they?

I, however, though I think longans are one of the most interesting tasting fruit in the world, no longer am as mad for them as I used to be. For one, now that I have to clean up after everyone in my own household, I find the woody branches and twigs to be full of dried leaves and mud which fall everywhere. The sandiness of the skins also makes me worry about transfer of bio-dirt onto the surface of the peeled fruit. 

Then there is the taste range. There can be, from one bunch, a gamut of sweetness levels, not to mention a wide difference in the water content of the fruit. Some are juicy (never as juicy as lychees, which, for the record, I do not like), and some are bone dry. When juicy, the sweetness is not the light sweetness of, say, a pineapple, but this thick, syrupy, nearly harsh sweetness which makes me stop eating after ten or so. 

I have yet to find a way to make that nearly cloying sweetness work in cooked food. I’m thinking Cornish hens stuffed with longans, or perhaps, our local quail stuffed with diced longans and some pilaf rice with turmeric and cinnamon… I’ll keep you posted, but the longan season is still a short one…