When I was about 4 or 5, growing up in Guangzhou, I went crazy with excitement whenever my parents brought home a sack of lychees or rambutans from the fruit market. Abandoning whatever toys I was playing with at a time, I would instead grab a plastic bowl and sit for at least an hour or two, carefully carefully removing the skin and pits, not eating any of the flesh until the bowl was filled.
For a kid, this was an excercise in restraint. But I loved the smooth, sweet, and jelly-like texture of both fruits so much that I wanted to eat it all at once, without work getting in the way. And the extra wait made eating doubly enjoyable.
The name rambutan comes from the Malay word for “hairy”, a fitting name for a fruit with a bright red prickly rind protecting pearly white or yellowish flesh. With yellow soft spikes that strike me as kind of punkish, rambutans seem to stand out in the market. Can I really eat these, you wonder. Will they prick me like cacti?
Like lychees and longan, rambutans only grow in Southeast Asia, news that came as disappointing when my family moved to Boston. We found lychees pretty easily in Boston’s Chinatown. But rambutans, those were harder, and more expensive when available. So I resigned myself to eating it maybe once every year or two. And forgot about how rewarding it was to peel and pit for an afternoon, to have a bowl of sweet rambutans to enjoy at the end.
Now in Beijing, they are a bit easier to find now. A few days ago, I bought a bunch, for ol’ times’ sake, and peeled them up to toss in a fruit salad. (Be careful when you peel or cut open the rind, since often juice will squirt out. Pull the skin back and the fruit will pop right out.) My fingers are much more nimble then when I was a toddler, so I filled a bowl with rambutan flesh in a fraction of the time. But the result was no less satisfying.
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Rambutan Fruit Salad
Serves 3 to 4
15 rambutan
1 large mango
2 kiwis
12 ounces (1 1/2 cups) sweetened coconut juice, chilled
Peel and pit the rambutan. Dice or slice mango into short thin strips. Thinly slice kiwis. Arrange or toss in a small bowl, and top with chilled sweetened coconut juice. Serve at once. Eat slowly while daydreaming about warm sandy beaches and lapping waves.
I LOVE lychees but I’ve never had rambutans! I have to look for them in Chinatown next time. How could I miss such a beautiful fruit?!
That looks better than I thought it would be! I want to try rambutan…
I love rambutan. Thanks for this post which reminded me of my time in Cambodia.
you can now buy fresh rambutan online at buyrambutan.com. enjoy!!!
YUMMM! I love rambutans. I spent 3 months in singapore and malaysia and that was the 1st time I ever had rambutan and lychee… they are both great but I like rambutan the best. I also tried durian…yuck! Didnt do it for me lol
Rambutans are also grown in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico – I have a bunch here but am having an impossible time peeling them away from the pit without getting a bunch of the skin-layer of the pit with it.
This recipe looks delicious!! We want to try it :) We also have rambutan in Costa Rica, but tipically we call them “Mamon Chino” It grows specially in the province of Limón. Ít´s harvest time so people are selling them a lot and it´s hard to keep your mouth shut ,because they look so delicious whenever we go to school and see the seller´s tables full of ripe red rambutans ahhh. *-* In the back garden of my house we have a nice rambutan tree but it only grows yellow rambutan, so the flavor is more acid unlike red ones, but it also tastes good :) I really wish I had all the ingredients right now !!! ._.
I love rambutans!! haven’t had them in absolutely ages I use to pluck them off the tree in my hometown Brunei :):)