Tropical Fruit of the Week: Terong Belanda


One fantastic thing about traveling to or living in a country that's unfamiliar to you, is that you encounter many interesting and unusual foods.  In my case, Indonesia is loaded with a cornucopia of tropical fruit, some I have tasted before, but many are ones with which I am completely unfamiliar.  Such is the case with this one I recently stumbled upon:  terong belanda.  Outside of Indonesia it is also known as tamarillo, tree tomato, or Dutch eggplant.

Tamarillo is native to South America, but it is grown in tropical and semi-tropical regions all over the world. The tamarillo tree is fairly short and stocky and often resembles a bush and seldom grows to be more than five meters tall. It's become especially prevalent in New Zealand as that nation is attempting to develop it as a cash crop.  

To me it was the consistency of a persimmon or something similar and it tasted a bit like a passion fruit, but a tiny bit sour--really I would say the taste is fairly unique. The seeds are soft and edible and it is highly nutritious, loaded especially with Vitamins A and C. I found it to be a refreshing taste treat, but I don't think it's commonly found in Jakarta as this was the first terong belanda I have seen during my Indonesian experience--not that I have been actively searching, but now I'll keep my eyes out for this healthy and delicious fruit.




 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You Can Learn Much About Red State Americans at Fort Cody

Image
  Earlier in my U.S. trip, I visited my son in North Platte, Nebraska.  It's the reddest, Trumpiest part of a very red state.  And during my visit I stopped at Fort Cody, a fake U.S. Army fort built in the 1960s to lure tourists off the newly-built superhighways as they traveled to vacation destinations out in the Western U.S. like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. That's why you display the two headed calf that was born on a farm in Nebraska in the 1940s, then stuffed after it died having lived only three days. This kind of oddity would be advertised as something to draw curious tourists off the highway to buy the souvenirs in your tourist attraction.  As I visited Fort Cody, the fake Army fort, I realized that this "tourist trap" was exclusively designed for Red-State, MAGA Trumpists and totally reflects their values and mental picture of what America is and should be.  Luckily, you don't have to visit Fort Cody, but I can interpret it for you and show yo...
Read more

Cambodian National Museum

Image
Whenever I visit a country that's new to me, I always try to go to its national museum as soon as I can because: a. visiting the national museum is the equivalent of reading a book about that country's history, another about its religion, a third about its archeology, and another about its art, artifacts, and culture--all in the space of a two-hour visit.  It's an incredible "speed-education" of where you are. b. you learn about what a nation finds most valuable, significant, precious, and dear (officially).  and you learn too from what is excluded.  c. it's a great point of comparison to your own nation and/or to the nation where you currently find yourself living. The Cambodian National Museum didn't disappoint and I certainly learned quite a bit. Definitely the strong emphasis was on its stone and bronze work, particularly that related to Buddhism.  Unlike Indonesia, which houses more than 300 distinct ethnic groups and features a great diversity of ite...
Read more

Ta Prohm: "The Tree Temple"

Image
  Ta Prohm Temple is definitely my favorite temple beyond main Angkor Wat.  When the entire archeological complex was "discovered" by the French in the 19th Century, most of it was in ruins and they embarked on a decades-long restoration project.  Though the French are no longer in charge of Cambodia, constant restoration efforts are continuing at the Angkor complex to make sure the temples survive into the next decades. The French made a brilliant decision when they started their restoration to keep one of the temples in the semi-ruined state that they found the entire site.  They chose Ta Prohm to keep in a semi-ruined state, though some restoration is constantly done there, just to keep the structures from completely falling down. Ta Prohm is somewhat unique also, in that, while parts of it served as a temple, the majority of the structure served as a monastery and has a distinctive design as opposed to what one would find at more-standard temples.    Ta...
Read more