Five days in Corsica, surrounded by the azure waters of the Mediterranean, dwarfed by mountains and cliffs, eating myself full with sausage and cheese. That was the plan. The food part of it didn’t quite come together.

A common problem for holiday-destination islands (and many warm, sunny coastal areas, of course) is the tacky tourist-oriented commerce that easily overwhelms the towns and villages where tourists stay. Although Corsica isn’t the Costa Brava or the more blighted areas of the Algarve, the coastal towns clearly live off the waves of sun-seeking tourists from April to September. The culinary outcome isn’t good.

Searching eGullet for tips about food in Corsica wasn’t encouraging (it barely seems to be on the map for most eGullet members, so there wasn’t a lot to go on in the way of tips) and, unsurprisingly, Corsican cuisine is mostly about the “rustic” end of the spectrum – cheese, sausage, stews, etc. That’s more my direction of interest anyway, so I didn’t feel deterred… I just learned the names of many traditional dishes and ingredients so I could recognise them on menus.

Disappointment came, however, in the effect of masses of sun-tourists on how much real local food was easily available. In the northwest of the island there was some pitching at tourists interested in cuisine typique corse, though easily overshadowed by pizza and pasta, but as soon as we headed across the island to the southeast (lots of resorts and beaches), pizza, pizza, pizza and pasta was almost all that was left.

Starting in the north, our first lunch involved a large salad with the local fresh ewe’s/goat’s milk brocciu (similar to a smooth ricotta or Portuguese queijo fresco) and pieces of figatellu, a smoked pork and liver sausage. Dinner was civolle pienu – onions stuffed with… brocciu and prizuttu (like prosciutto), roasted, then a dish of roasted Corsican lamb (overcooked). Breakfast was a lemony cheesecake called fiadone, made with… brocciu.

We headed through the centre of the island, stopping in the major crossroad town of Corte for lunch. A central square in the old town featured numerous restaurants squarely aimed at tourists. It was a little disheartening, and despite many promoting Corsican “menus”, many of these were little more than salads (see above), omelettes with brocciu and mint, or dollops of brocciu in otherwise broadly French dishes. We were lucky to choose a restaurant with a passable “assiette Corse” or Corsican cheese and charcuterie plate. A great find, because it delivered four tasty local types of sausage (lonzu, coppa, prizuttu and one more), a terrine and a tomme-like cheese, plus a lovely fig jam. Whether any of these really displayed a Corsican “signature” flavour, however, was hard to divine. A boar stew with gnocchi was also delicious.

By the time we reached the southeast and were looking for dinner, we sensed disappointments ahead. The simple promotional slogan of cuisine typique corse was almost gone. Menus claiming Corsican dishes offered, again, salads or some pasta dishes with hints of Corsica but little more. Grilled meats and fish, or ravioli stuffed with brocciu and silverbeet are traditional dishes, but where were the various prepared meats, the boar, the stews, the chickpeas, anything using any other local cheese? Even the fancier restaurants, claiming again to be in Corsican style, displayed menus of modern French cuisine with little remarkably local input other than chestnuts and locally sourced fish and meat. For most tourists, the closest they’ll come to a diverse range of Corsican foods is the recipe postcards on sale everywhere, or the sausage stands in the supermarkets.

No doubt, the story would have been very different if we had been able to spend more time in the north and in small inland towns or villages, or visit local producers. As can be seen from these two excellent articles (Corsica Isula, NYT), there’s more to Corsica than can be readily discovered by tourists without local recommendations, staying just a few days. As a starting point, it might be easier to try this excellent book, Recipes from Corsica by Rolli Lucarotti! (BookDepository, Fishpond)

It must be said that the physical beauty of Corsica is enough to recommend the place in a flash, food or no food. I’ve written a bit more about Corsica on Duncan’s Miscellany.

The lure of supermarkets and convenience stores is irresistible when I travel. The novelty of different packaging, mysterious powders, new chocolate brands (mostly disappointing), and the cornucopia of snackfoods can keep me entranced for ages. I have enough trouble escaping from Tatsing (Newmarket) or Minh Phat (Richmond) and neither of those are new to me! But it’s the extra weight in my luggage when I fly my way home that really shows the lure of new things.

Before recent travel I thought it time to examine my Shelf of Travel Food Mementoes. The intention of the shelf was originally to encourage me to sample and continue to eat my way through the collected bounty, but I seem to have failed, as many years’ travel appears to have accumulated without sufficient attention from me.

You might notice, for instance, an abundance of Ricola lollies. There’s aux Plantes, Verveine citronée, AlpinFresh, Argousier, CitronMélisse, Fleur de sureau, OrangeMenthe, Spearmint Fresh Pearls and LemonMint. The Frenchie ones were acquired in France (2009) when I was on the wave of Ricola discovery (I didn’t use to like hard sugary lollies, but times changed and long-ignored products suddenly caught my attention). Little did I know that what I thought was a very narrow range of Ricola in Australia (thank you, Coles), was nothing of the sort. I returned from travels to find the Reject Shop selling most of the above flavours in English 😉 for half the price! Of greater embarrassment than this, however, is the fact that most of the packets were unopened when I took this photo, despite having been bought over a year earlier. Tsk tsk. At least the Spearmint Fresh Pearls were only about eight months old (Kuala Lumpur in October)… still unopened.

Meanwhile, from Sweden (also 2009) are Läkerol, a few flavours of which are found at IKEA in Australia. But mine, collected in the “home” country are the rather tasty Yuzo Citrus (yes, opened that one), and the as-yet-untasted Eucalyptus, Pitaya (dragonfruit) and Licorice-Watermelon. Actually, I just opened the Pitaya and discovered that it comes “with strawberry pieces” and tastes, um, sweet and acidic and lightly perfumed. It’s lucky that chewy lolly connoisseurism isn’t a big thing, or Läkerol would have to try a little bit harder (and who would try to seriously capture the flavour of dragonfruit??).

I rarely use chewing gum, but new flavours always catch my eye. Fond memories of a Wrigley’s sage and lemon chewing gum linger from a trip to, um, the Czech Republic I think (I found the almost empty package in the bottom of a laptop bag the other day… too gory to reveal to you here). In the picture below, however, you see Green Tea Mint chewy (foul) and Lemongrass (obscured at the top) which was new in Malaysia last year (and rather difficult to find once I was addicted).

On the top right we have the rather awful pseudo-macarons made of fruit-flavoured chocolate from the otherwise excellent Michel Cluizel. They were awful when I bought them, and over a year later they were downright spit-out-able (I know, should have chucked them out a year ago). In complete contrast, the neighbour in the photo are tasty little cinnamon flavoured Pastiglie Leone. I have a few half-eaten packets of other flavours from previous years lying around the house. I emphatically do not recommend the green tea “Tuareg” flavour, astringent enough to shrivel your tastebuds for a day unless you’re a hardened green tea lover! Putting that flavour to one side, I was delighted to discover that you can find these pastilles in Australia — on a visit to Liaison café in Melbourne I saw an artfully arranged pile of boxes.

The coloured tins with heart-shaped figures are OralFixation Mints from the US (but bought in Malaysia). I’m a sucker for small tins, and US sweet and gum manufacturers are great at feeding my fetish. (Come to think of it, a star in the tin world is Altoids, actually British, but better known in the US.) Anyway, these OralFixation thingies in cinnamon (yum, but not steroid-strength like Altoids) and green tea (meh) are very stylish.

Almost finished, and we have three favourites at the bottom left. Starting with the childhood nostalgic disappointment is the Jacobs orange Club biscuit. Knowing that, as a child, I loved the greasy chocolate and the gritty biscuit just didn’t save them from disdain. Having bought a six-pack with glee at Tesco, most of them lay unloved at the back of the shelf, with good reason. Then there’s the Fazer Viol licorice chewy lollies. Lovely. Clear violet flavour. A pleasant suck. And finally, childhood hit and enduring favourite, violet flavoured Anis de Flavigny — hard, lightly fragranced sugar balls with a smooth exterior and a tiny aniseed in the middle.

I know of many others who hoard tasty treats (flavoured KitKats seem to be a recurring theme among bloggers), but most do manage to devour their bounty within a brief time. What do you hoard from your travels and then find months or years later?

I asked the durian seller, quite persistently, how to tell the difference between the many varieties of the fruit he sold. He had four, each for a different price.

Mittens, my co-eater, had tasted every one of these stinky, prickly darlings over our nights in Kuala Lumpur and could discern differences in texture, sweetness and some of the “bitter” aspect described by many durian afficionados. Yet to the uninitiated, these were all just homogeneously beprickled stinkpots.

After interrogating the seller, I rushed back to my hotel to make notes for later, so I could communicate the imparted knowledge to my dear readers. Alas, somewhere between good intention and a bag of cheap and gorgeously delicious mangosteens, the manual annotation never happened, leaving me with just my memories. Those memories endured for a few weeks, but now, as I have sat down to impart the durian knowledge a few months later, I discover I have no notes and my memory has faded.

It seems almost cruel to tell you the differences between four varieties of durian when I can’t remember which was which, but I live in hope that some other durian-wise internaut might pass by and help out with the labelling.

Durians are weighty, prickly fruits, usually in excess of 1kg, with large segments of thick, creamy flesh surrounding a seed. The flesh ranges from pale off-white to yellow and even red. Durian lovers can identify “sweet” and “bitter” characteristics between varieties, and the texture can range from very creamy and soft to quite thick, and sometimes fibrous. Durians smell nasty to the uninitiated and are variously banned from hotels, some public places and public transportation (which of course means they are often identifiable on public transportation, rules being there to be broken).

Durian season in Malaysia is approximately June to September, but kampung (village) durian from local village growth, rather than organised plantations, and Sarawak/Sabah (Borneo) durians are around for considerably longer and can still be good quality (we were there in late October). Durian vendors will usually cut open the chosen durian and remove the segments, placing them in a container for you to smuggle back to your hotel. Hehehe. The SE-Asian press frequently writes about durian, and there are a few blogs too, though unfortunately they spend more time enjoying the latest durian than helpfully cataloguing the types (I display my analytical bias unashamedly). The widest range of photos is probably found at Stinky Spikes, or watch this guy’s great video of durians being cut open.

I believe the Malaysian varieties that were explained to me were labelled D2, D24, D101 and King Musang. (Malaysia has helpfully numbered many local varieties, though they are sometimes commonly referred to by special names instead.) You’ll also find other varieties such as D99 around Malaysia and the lucky-dip kampung ones. In Australia we only really see Mon Thong (D159) durian from Thailand, quietly defrosting at market stalls or in the occasional supermarket.

So here are the four characteristics I was shown and sadly can no longer associate with specific varieties:

Type1: the spikes align so that you get straight spines (valleys) running the length of the fruit in some places. (possibly D24)

Type2: the spikes are arranged in groups of four of similar size, surrounding a fifth little one. (possibly D101)

Type3: at the base of the fruit, the spines diminish to an almost bald spot, described by the seller as looking a bit like a star (the uneven flattening around the edges could create that impression). (perhaps King Musang?)

Type4: at the base of the fruit, the spines diminish to a raised almost bald spot which protrudes a little like a nipple.

We saw all of these examples firsthand, but I can’t guarantee that these characteristics are always present.

Variety D24 is very well regarded (pale yellow flesh, stinky, creamy, sticky, bitter-sweet), but King Musang (stronger yellow flesh) seemed to be the most expensive in KL when we were there and Mittens loved it (I suspect this is the same as the variety that seems to get a lot of press in SE-Asia: Mao Shan Wang; stinky, creamy, sticky, bitter-sweet). D101 has dark yellow flesh and is sweet, creamy, with small seed.

Although I would once have vomited at the prospect of eating durian, my “appreciation” of this fruit changed during our trip (hey, two weeks of durian-smuggling-into-hotels by Mittens didn’t leave much scope for nausea). I still can’t breathe through my nose while putting the flesh in my mouth, but I can sort of enjoy the thick creamy mouthfeel and sweetness. It’s a bit like an incredibly unctuous egg custard, thickened too far, and with a dash of rotting onion thrown in for fun. I don’t appreciate the residual rotten-onion-breath.

So while Mittens slurped up the contents of a one-kilo durian every night for thirteen nights, I contented myself with juggling fresh, spongy-shelled mangosteens, and discovering why hotels don’t appreciate the red juice from the shell (it *stains*). Mangosteen are just beautiful, but don’t bother with derivatives like syrups or sorbets, as the delicate flavour is almost impossible to capture properly.

As a side-note, it should be mentioned that while the pong of durian is very very hard to conceal, the pong of jackfruit is more pervasive in a hotel fridge. Jackfruit seems innocuous, and tastes quite pleasant, but it smells of something approaching warm, rancid cheddar, even at 4C, and its spirit lingers even after consumption.

Anyway, back to durian for one last time. Chinese Malaysians will tell you that durian is “heaty” and one shouldn’t eat too much. “I’ve heard of someone who died by eating too much” is a not uncommon comment. Well, to them I say that Mittens must be rather chilly, cos after thirteen durians he was crying out for the next one and was in excellent health.

Apologies for this rather unhelpful durian catalogue! Fingers crossed that it is enhanced over time. Selamat makan!