Sweetness from the top of the tree

Nick Read — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:44:57 +0000

The male is shaped like a fork with the central prong much longer; the three pronged like a knobbly green tuber, buy both can be used. When they look ready, the villagers prop their ladders against the tree, just a bamboo pole with rungs on each side, and climb up. Syrup can be harvested from both flowers, but they have to be ‘ready’, turgid and yielding slightly when squeezed. If there are too many flowers on a single tree, they remove some of them off to concentrate the yield. Then they ‘milk’ the chosen flowers by squeezing them gently between large wooden tongs, like those that were once used to get sheets out of the boiler. This is known as ‘training’ and it is done morning and evening for a four days, After each training session, they dip the end in a bottle of water. Then when it seems ripe enough to harvest, they cut off the tip with a sharp knife. If the tip seeps the sugar, they attach a bottle to the end and allow the juice to collect. At the end of the day, they pour the juice into a large metal bowl and concentrate the syrup overnight by allowing it to simmer gently on top of an oven made of the particularly pure clay that can only be collected from termite mounds. As the branches smoulder, they advance them into the oven to maintain an even heat, hot enough the boil the juice but not too hot so it will dry and burn.

The concentrated syrup is brown and tastes like fudge or maple syrup. It is just right for cooking as a moderate heat makes it runny. It sweetens the coconut cream and fish sauce in Fish Amok. It is delicious when poured on fresh mango and coconut sticky rice and when added to tamarind juice and lime, it make such a refreshing drink. Or just buy a packet of palm sugar lozenges wrapped up in a palm leaf. So much better than Kendal Mint Cake.

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A Muse on Fruit

Nick Read — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:18:14 +0000

Alfred Russel Wallace, who nearly beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution, described it like this. “It is like buttery custard, flavoured with almonds intermingled with wafts of flavour that call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, ground cherries [sherry wine?] and other incongruities. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy. Yet one feels the want of none of these qualities for it is perfect as it is. Eat it immediately.”

The durian is a large fruit, like a spiky rugby ball. It is so smelly that it is banned from airline cabins and some hotels. But the Asians love them; they consider them an aphrodisiac. There’s a Malay saying that when the durians are down the sarongs are up.

Every morning at Rainbow Lodge, we were served a plate of exotic fruits. It was an education.

The Soursop is related to the Durian, only smaller, not spiky, but with an irregular surface. It has a chewy, sweet white flesh with flat black seeds.

The Custard Apple is like the Soursop. It has overlapping greenish flesh and is very juicy, sweet yet slightly acid.

And then there’s the Mangosteen. These when they are ripe are small, dark purple, round fruits with a rosette of sepals on the top of them. The flesh is juicy, white and sweet yet slightly acid. The bark and the skin of the fruit can be used to treat diarrhoea.

But for flavour, I just love the Long yong or Durkin. It tastes like a lychee, but is softer and sweeter and one the flesh is peeled off, it is in white segments like garlic.

The Pomelo is the largest grapefruit. It can be used as a salad vegetable or fruit.

The Dragon’s Eye Fruit, is a true lychee but contains a much larger black seed and has the smooth white surface and disconcerting consistency of an eyeball.

The Rambutan is a hairy lychee. “Rambut” means “whiskery hairs”.

The Sapodilla is one that I really like. It’s a brown fruit that tastes like toffee, like a pear flavoured with maple syrup.

The Snake Fruit looks interesting. It’s shaped a little bit like an inverted comma or the head of a cobra. The brown spotted skin also resembles that of a snake. The flesh is milky and sour.

Then of course there are the sweetest mangos and papayas, (though the Cambodians also like to eat them unripe in strips as a vegetable) and pineapples. The seeds of the pineapple are arranged in a spiral. Cut them out in a shallow wedge with a sharp knife for a perfect presentation.

And did you know that the cashew nut nestles into the base of the green cashew apple, which tastes sweet not unlike an apple.

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Nick Read » Eating

Sweetness from the top of the tree

A Muse on Fruit