Recipe Lab
Recipes Built on Curiosity
Four recipes, each cooked at least three times in a home kitchen. The rule: the strange ingredient must still taste like itself at the end.
Unusual ingredients tempt cooks into two mistakes. The first is hiding them, blending durian into a milkshake until it could be anything. The second is overloading them, piling ten other loud flavours on top so the dish becomes a stunt. These recipes sit between the two. Each one gives the ingredient a simple, sympathetic partner: salt and acid for fruit, fat for aged garlic, starch for durian's richness.
Quantities serve two to four. Open a recipe to see the full method.
The four tested recipes
Mangosteen, cucumber and mint salad
Inspired by Thai yam-style salads. The fish sauce sounds wrong next to delicate fruit; it isn't. Salt makes mangosteen taste sweeter.
- Open 6 mangosteens by pressing the rind between your palms until it cracks. Lift out the segments and remove any seeds.
- Slice half a cucumber into thin half-moons. Toss with a pinch of salt and leave 5 minutes, then pat dry.
- Whisk 1 tbsp lime juice, 2 tsp fish sauce, 1 tsp palm sugar and half a finely sliced red chilli.
- Combine fruit, cucumber, a handful of mint leaves and 1 tbsp toasted peanuts. Dress just before serving.
Watch out: mangosteen sap stains wood and cloth permanently. Use a plate, not your favourite board.
Durian with coconut sticky rice
A Thai classic, khao niao durian. The salted coconut cream softens durian's intensity and makes a convert of most first-timers.
- Soak 250 g glutinous rice in cold water for at least 4 hours. Drain and steam over a cloth for 25 minutes until translucent.
- Warm 200 ml coconut milk with 60 g sugar and ½ tsp salt until dissolved. Pour two-thirds over the hot rice, cover and rest 15 minutes.
- Simmer the remaining coconut milk with 1 tsp rice flour slurry until it coats a spoon.
- Serve rice with 200 g fresh or frozen-thawed durian pulp (Monthong is gentlest), spooning the thick cream over both.
Watch out: wrap leftover durian twice and store it in a sealed box, or your fridge will remember it for a week.
Finger lime avocado toast
- Toast two thick slices of sourdough and rub one side with a cut garlic clove.
- Mash one ripe avocado with salt, olive oil and a few drops of lemon. Spread thickly.
- Cut two finger limes in half crossways and squeeze the pearls over the top.
- Finish with flaky salt, black pepper and a few chilli flakes. Eat immediately, before the pearls soften.
Black garlic and miso butter
- Peel 8 black garlic cloves and mash into a paste with the flat of a knife.
- Beat into 125 g softened unsalted butter with 1 tbsp white miso and a few gratings of lemon zest.
- Roll in baking paper into a log and chill for an hour.
- Slice onto grilled steak, roast mushrooms or hot corn on the cob. Keeps two weeks refrigerated, three months frozen.
Notes from the lab
We test with ingredients you can actually buy. Frozen durian pulp from Asian supermarkets is good, and often better than a mediocre fresh fruit that has spent two weeks at sea. Canned young jackfruit is perfectly reliable. Finger limes are the hardest to find outside Australia; specialist greengrocers and some farmers' markets in Europe and the US stock them in their autumn season.
If a recipe doesn't work for you, tell us how. Several of the quantities above changed after readers wrote in. You'll find the ledger form on our contact page, and the home page has three more recipes, including young jackfruit tacos.