One thing that never stops surprising me is just how many fruits we are used to, have an Asian version. This always happens the same way. Somebody gives me a fruit that looks like one I'm familiar with, but something is off about it. Usually it's the color or shape, but no matter what it is, it seems like the fruit has gone bad and/or has yet to ripen. Which kind of makes sense. Somebody has a lot of spoiled fruit, but doesn't want to just throw it away, so instead they give it to the foreigner cause he won't know the difference.
Regardless, I will take the fruit home and put it aside as it looks scary. Then there comes the point where I'm just too hungry and have nothing left in the house so I will eat the fruit. I then find out that it was quite tasty and will look up what it is. Nine times out of ten the English name is Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese/Asian ______. Granted this is because we don't really have this kind in the west, so when somebody gave it an English name that just take where it's from and put that in front of the fruit that it's most like. But for the most part a lot of these fruits are in the same family as it's western cousin.
This happened recently when somebody gave me an "orange." Now I'm not colorologist (cause i just made up that profession) but an orange should be orange. This thing was light green with like a bright yellow bald spot. It definitely looked as it was a bad orange, but I was hungry and I gave it a try. Inside it looked like an orange and it tasted like an orange, a very good one at that. So yes it was an orange, and when I looked it up, well i don't remember what it was called but it was just a special kind of orange that is native to asia.
It is not the thing in the picture though. The one in the picture is Thai orange which is smaller and hard. For this fruit you can't actually peel it cause it's so hard and the skin is so thin. You have to cut it and then separate the peel form the fruit. It's very sweet and is more commonly used to make an extremely sweet drink that is sold in most night markets. I put the picture up because the color array most resembles the orange I ate and enjoyed.
