White and sweet Terap fruit

I don't have to climb this Terap tree ( Artocarpus odoratissimus Blanco) this morning to harvest its ripe fruits. This tree is still small and planted just about three years ago. With the aid of a bamboo pole I managed to harvest two ripe fruits. Sometimes the Terap fruit (Malay) is also called 'Ong Lumok' among the Melanaus here. The fruits are very sweet tasting. Often times the seeds that are enclosed by the white pulp or flesh are dried and then fried as afternoon snacks. However I just love to eat them fresh and ripe from the tree. After each season I would normally germinate the seeds for propagation purpose and now there are at least 50 Terap trees that I planted in the farm the last few years. This tree is the first batch of newly planted Terap trees at the farm besides the ones that were here long before I came on the scene , some towering as high as 30 meters above my head.

Remove the skin carefully and you'll find the fleshy pulp soft to touch and would easily separate from the seed by applying a little pressure with the tongue. Eat the flesh but not the seed.

Seasonal Fruits at the farm

After spending the month of May in Kuching, I'm back in Bintulu for the month of June. Unfortunately or fortunately I felt ill for about a week now. But today I'm feeling better. The stress of working on the assignments, reading and preparation for exam must have taken a toll on me. Well June is semester break and I'm thinking of making full use of it from now onwards.

Thus I decided to walk around the farm this morning to make up for all the good things nature provides here. It looks like the seasonal fruits are coming into fashion. Here's a peek at a few that are showing at the farm today.

The 'Cempedak' or Artocarpus integer. Unripe ones like these can be served as vegetables.

'Ong Lumok' is what the Melanaus in Bintulu refer to this fruit which can also be prepared as vegetables when young.

I sliced into half this very young 'Ong Balem' fruit ( Mangifera pajang). Take it raw as salad with shrimp paste ( Belacan).

A Fruitful Tuesday

Last night it rained heavily but when I woke this morning the weather was fine. It struck me that today I have to pay a visit to Bintulu town to check my mail and pay the 3G Phone bill so that I can carry on interneting without interruption  when the long end of year holiday starts with the X'mas day off this coming Friday, Malaysian time.

To start the day I climbed this jackfruit tree ( artocarpus interger) in my farm and collected 30 nos to give away to my brothers and sisters and relatives in town.  This year most of the fruits are attacked by insects that bore through the thick skin and rot the fruits. Therefore in order not to lose the  fruits to insects,  I decided to pluck them early i.e. when they are still unripe to be used as vegetables instead.  Below is how we cook the young jackfruit as vegetable. 

Guide to preparation: Remove the skin, cut the young fruit into 2 cm cubes and boil it with pounded chillies, onions, garlic, shrimp paste ( belacan), lemon grass in coconut milk. Boil for about 15- 20 minutes.

The creamy taste is very yummy, yummy,yummy!

Next to the jackfruit tree I found these two varieties of mushrooms, one white which is edible and the other orange which is a bit poisonous. They sprout easily these days due to the rainy season.

Later while in town, I dropped by a Melanau kampung house by the river to get the above shot. The speed boat is powered by a twin 200 horsepower outboard engines. Normally these boats are rented by fishing enthusiasts or tourists for deep -sea fishing  or sightseeing the Bintulu coastline or river.

The feather-leaved palm tree at the center of the picture is the familiar coconut tree.

These boats are also rented by timber merchants or traders who need to inspect their logs when loading onto timber ships that  anchor about 10-15 km offshore before they are bound to foreign destinations.

Lastly after having collected my mail and paid the telephone bill, I bought other provisions at this Parkcity Shopping Mall. I found this X'mas tree to be the biggest and the highest this time around.

This year I noticed too that the shopping crowd is thin as most people are tightening their belts in view of the gloomy days ahead when  we will face tougher times due to the severe recession which is now a confirmed reality in US and many other developed economies.

I guess we just have to be moderate, I mean very moderate in our spending now.

Want to barter jackfuits with me anyone? 

Serving the 'Bald Fruit' - Ong Balem ( Mangifera pajang) at Eco-farm

If you like mangoes then you should like these slices of 'ong balem'. Both the mango and the 'balem' are from the same family i.e. mangifera. The taste can range from sweet sour to very sweet. Unlike the mango the balem fruit is very fibrous and for that matter I love to eat it. Guess it is good for the stomach and general body upkeep. Whereas the mango is known as mangifera indica, the balem is called mangifera pajang. The word 'Ong' in the Bintulu Melanau dialect means fruit, thus 'Ong Balem' - the fruit of the 'Balem' tree.

Bintulu is now in the full swing of the seasonal fruiting season which is at its peak in the months of November right till December annually. At any day now at the Bintulu tamu or jungle produce market you can see the above ' bald ' looking fruit called the 'balem' in the local Melanau dialect. The Ibans call them 'Bambangan' and among the nomadic Penan tribes, it is called 'Alim'. The going price per fruit of the above size ( about 1-1.5 kilo) is RM 1.

In my childhood years we used to joke at a bald-headed guy as 'Ong Balem'. A secret code only a few knew.

The skin of the balem fruit is thick and in a single fruit of say 1.5 kilo, half a kilo will be its skin and another half its sizeable seed. The skin is easily peeled off from the pulp or flesh and its important to follow the fibrous veins to cut it neatly and easily.

The ripe balem fruit is best taken fresh. Its thick skin are sliced into small pieces and can be eaten as salad with the local shrimp paste or belacan. Besides that the skin can also be done as pickles.

Now this tree is tall indeed. It's the balem tree at our eco-farm and its long and straight trunk reaches about 35 meters high at the top of the canopy. Lest I forget, the young leaves of the balem can be eaten raw as salad, of course with the local belacan paste. I believe this tree must be around 60 years or more.

The balem tree can be found wild in mixed dipterocarp forests but rare. It is mainly a cultivated tree in Sarawak's lowland evergreen forests like our eco-farm for instance.

Watching the Banana Inflorescence

In my eco-farm, I have about 12 varieties of bananas that produce fine edible fruits of various tastes and texture. I hope to get more better fruiting varieties in future.  Lately, I have been watching the flowering stages of one particular banana 'tree'.  I type 'tree' to differentiate the banana from other kind of trees.  The mature banana 'trunk' consists of concentric tubular leaf-sheaths. What appears as the banana stem is actually the bases of the leaves fitting closely together.  Newer large leaves are formed, each with a longer sheath than the last, until the full length of the plant is reached.

Below are the exciting moments.

From the very end of the stem the flowering spike thrusts upwards.

The terminal spike is enclosed by large overlapping purplish bracts, now bends over.

One bract opens out from the terminal spike to expose the first female flowers.

The female flowers producing the fruits appear in stages and are arranged in a hand-like formation.  After successive groups of female flowers have appeared, the remaining terminal spike consisting of closely fit bracts contain only male flowers.  The pendulous male tip of the inflorescence is called the 'jantung' in Malay.  The jantung is edible and many eat it as salad or cook them as vegetables with coconut milk.

A CU view of the female flowers. Note one free petal ( white in colour) and a gap between it and stamens above.  At the base of the stamens nectar is produced oozing a sour-sweet smell, attractive to the bats which lick them normally in the evening hours.( Of course with their claws stuck to the bracts,hanging upside down)

To cut the short story short, I move over to the next tree and to show kind folks around how a bunch of the banana fruits looks in mid air.

Enjoy your bananas.

P.S. In cultivated species, the pollination of female flowers are unnecessary because they acquired the habit of developing without pollination. Anyway, bananas have no seeds except their wild cousins.