Santol season is here!

The santol fruit

It is santol (cotton fruit or Sandoricum koetjape) season once again here and every time I see these fruits in the market I can't help but salivate a little (with that unmistakable mouth puckering sensation you get when you think of sour food). Some varieties are sweet but this reaction is almost instinctive. The way we prepare this for eating is cutting the thick rind until only a thin layer of the flesh remains, dip it into some salty soy sauce (or salt) and enjoy trying to separate the rind and white pulp from the seed inside our mouth. Ok, that sounds a bit weird but it is a little difficult to explain how to eat it. :P

We used to have a santol tree where we lived in our hometown but I remember my grandmother having this huge sweet variety from the farm. I suspect that it is a variety originating in Thailand since we called it "Bangkok santol".