Buoh Khadeh

This is my second time being home this year after moving to KL. I admit, I wasn't that keen on keeping my blog updated, whats with my study and neverending work with Dr S (don't get me wrong, I love working for her), hence somehow finding time to blog is not on the top of my list.

Today, I am going to talk about a special delicacy I stumbled upon during my last visit to Pasor Keda Payang last Sunday.

When I was a kid (that would be a long long time ago), Buah Khadeh was the first thing I would look for whenever I had the chance to tag along with my mother or my grandfather. We would take the boat penambang from Seberang Takir jetty after each paid 50 cents to the man with the syilling can waiting by the edge of the jetty. Sometimes we paid the miniscule fee to the boat owner themselves.

The buah khadeh in standard Malay is called buah keranji,and although I have no idea how keranji trees look like, I enjoy the sweet sour taste of the velvety textured fruit. In fact when I was a kid, I thought that buah keranji is man-made! Somehow the feeling that I get when peeling the thin black skin and the fact that it doesn't taste like normal fruits made me wonder how do we produce this sweet treat. Of course I was very young back then and didn't think that it is actually a type of fruit.

So, 20 years later, I was going through several foodstuffs sold at the ground floor of Paso Keda Payang and there it is, a bag of buoh khadeh sold for RM5!!! Considering that I used to get it for much much less than that, I asked the seller why is it so expensive nowadays.

She told me that the buoh khadeh had suffered a mysterious disappearance from the market. Somehow it took almost two years for it to appear on the shelves and when it returned, the price just fluctuated. She claimed that it used to be RM20 segantang (about 3.5kg) but nowadays it costs RM30 to RM40 per kilogram!!

Now I remembered there was actually a time when I went to look for it at the market but to no avail. Mystery solved!

However I must say this: the taste is slightly different compared to the buoh khadeh in the 90s. It is less sweet and thw color sort of fades a little bit. However I still enjoy the taste as it brings back memories from the past.

I do hope that it would not disappear as I am sure that many more younger generations of Terengganu like me would appreciate enjoying this cotton-light fruit once in a while.