(Continued from Part 2)
The Eating
Not only had I never had tamarind but had also never even seen one. I was surprised to see that they looked like large, coarse, brown beans, but this made sense when I learned that the tamarind is in the pea family and saw that the leaves were typical pea family leaves. Here are pictures of my tamarinds.
- All of my tamarinds gathered on a plate.
- Five tamarinds on my cutting board to show variation.
- A close-up of one tamarind. The next five pictures show what happened to this tamarind as I ate it.
- A close-up of a tamarind with the shell broken in one place. To shell the tamarind, you crack it much like a peanut. It is easier to deal with than a peanut; since the shell is thinner and more brittle, it easily cracks apart.
- A close-up of a tamarind with the shell removed. it does take some care to remove all the little shell fragments, which stick to the fruit. You can see the little strings that run down the length of the fruit. I don't know what the strings are or what function they perform.
- A close up of the tamarind fruit once it is peeled and ready to eat.
- The strings after they are removed from the fruit.
- The seeds. Each little lump in the fruit contains a seed, which you need to spit out. It is easy to deal with these seeds; you are in no danger of swallowing them or damaging your teeth on them. A seed that comes out of your mouth is dull and gooey. Once you rinse it, however, it takes on an appealing gloss and is a suitable component of fruit art.
Now for the taste test. I separated two lumps of fruit from a tamarind and popped them into my mouth. The texture screamed, "Date!" since it was thick and gooey. ("Tamarind" comes from the Arabic, tamar hindi, which means Indian date.) The taste, however, was nothing like the extreme sweetness of dates (28 Dec 2014). The Internet experts had prepared me for a sweet-and-sour taste, but at first I could detect no taste at all. I tried some more, concentrated, and after considerable chewing was finally able to detect a very faint taste, so faint that I can't describe it. I suspect that my tamarinds were below average in potency.
To give my tamarinds a second chance, later I ate some right after working out. The thinking is that after working out I am at my hungriest and food tastes the best.The result was almost the same. The only change was that the faint taste that emerged after lengthy chewing had a slight suggestion of raisin; this taste was so faint that it could only be perceived by a hungry person who was concentrating intensely on the taste.
The verdict, based on this unreliably small sample, is that the tamarind is a fruit for one who likes the texture of dates but not the sweetness.
Use of the Tamarind Plant
Tamarinds may be eaten either at the green immature stage or when the shell pod has become brittle and the interior pulp has turned brown. In the American tropics, tamarind pulp is commonly used with sugar and water to prepare a cool, refreshing beverage. In Asia, grated green tamarinds are often mixed with hot peppers and salt and eaten as a salad. When separated from the shell and seeds, the mature, brown sticky pulp can be prepared to season meats and chutney. Tamarind paste is one of the essential ingredients in the popular Worcestershire sauce. And in some countries it is used as a mild laxative.
A Huffington Post article from 2014 asks the penetrating question, "What the Hell is Tamarind, Anyway?" It motivates this question in the following way:
And if you're wondering why you really need to expand your knowledge of tamarind, look no further than chef Yotam Ottolenghi -- pretty much the "it" chef for all things vegetarian right now, as far as we're concerned. Ottolenghi uses tamarind paste in everything; it's one of his "secret" ingredients. If that's not reason enough to get to know tamarind, we don't know what is. [Link omitted]
Here is how to follow in the steps of the "it" chef and make your own tamarind paste (or concentrate or extract).
The best way to enjoy the pulp is to make a flavorful concentrate. Discard the seeds from the pulp. Soak the pulp in very hot water and cover for several hours or overnight. With a slotted spoon, scoop the pulp out of the water. Using a fine strainer, press out all the juice from the pulp. Use the strained pulp in recipes calling for tamarind extract or paste.If you don't want to make your own, you can order from Amazon. Also, add sugar to the liquid produced by this process to obtain tamarind juice, or you can buy it.
To learn about the culinary uses of tamarind, see this site. The quick summary of this lengthy discussion is that tamarind is used for just about everything. For those on a budget, a cooking tip is to take advantage of tamarind's acidity by using it to tenderize cheap cuts of meat.
Unusually for a fruit, tamarind is high in calcium.
In Madagascar the ring-tailed lemurs prize tamarind fruit and leaves, and over the course of the year tamarind might provide fifty percent of their diet. Black headed orioles also feast on tamarind trees.
Tamarind wood is dense, durable, and red or a dark purplish-brown, and it is often used in furniture and flooring since it takes a good polish; see below. (The hollow that you see in the first picture is typical of the center of a tamarind tree.) Tamarind wood is also used for sculpture; see the carved bird below, which is part of a project to carve 100 birds from 100 different woods..
Tamarind is the basis of a raft of cosmetics, one of which is shown below.
In Africa, tamarind fruit is used to dye goat hides. See this site for many additional commercial uses of tamarind, e.g., using the seeds in brick-making.
The tamarind tree is host to the lac insect Kerria lacca, which deposits a resin on the twigs that can be used to produce lacquers and varnishes.
Few plants will survive beneath a tamarind tree and there is a superstition that it is harmful to sleep or to tie a horse beneath one, probably because of the corrosive effect that fallen leaves have on fabrics in damp weather. Some African tribes venerate the tamarind tree as sacred. To certain Burmese, the tree represents the dwelling-place of the rain god and some hold the belief that the tree raises the temperature in its immediate vicinity. Hindus may marry a tamarind tree to a mango tree before eating the fruits of the latter. In Nyasaland, tamarind bark soaked with corn is given to domestic fowl in the belief that, if they stray or are stolen, it will cause them to return home. In Malaya, a little tamarind and coconut milk is placed in the mouth of an infant at birth, and the bark and fruit are given to elephants to make them wise.
Party Tip
Your party tip is to enable your guests to make tamarind candy. In short, you make tamarind paste as described above, mix it with sugar and spices, and mold it into the desired shape. Show your guests this video, which demonstrates the fine points. Provide a sauce pan, a stove, sugar, spices, and turn your guests loose. Some will be content to mold tamarind candy into the traditional balls (see picture below), but others will refuse to limit themselves to this pedestrian shape and will take advantage of the fact that tamarind candy can be molded into any shape. Provide an array of cookie cutters for those guests who want to make reindeer and stars. Be prepared, however, for guests who are willing to go freestyle, and who might create Donald Trump's hair, a replica of the Santa Maria, the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock, the Statue of Liberty, or a model of the Death Star. Sympathize with your artists as they watch helplessly while their creations are consumed by the philistines among the guests.
Travel Tip
Your travel tip is to visit the Chinese village of Laideng, the location of a 1600 year old tamarind tree known as the "Tamarind King." It takes a chain of six adults to encircle the Tamarind King. Once the chain is in place, make a wish, and the Tamarind King will grant it as long as it is not a selfish wish. The picture below shows a tamarind sculpture at the entrance to Laideng, which has been designated as a special tourist village in Yunnan province. (From the ladder, the lone workman, and the numerous supervisors standing around, I infer that this sculpture is in the process of being put into place. When it is in its final location, perhaps the protective scaffolding will be removed.) If you are the kind who wants to see every attraction, while in Laideng you will want to take in the impressive vistas of the muddy waters of the Bijiang River; see picture below. I am unable to tell if those are tamarind trees along the river. Be aware that daylight savings time is not observed in Liadeng.
Rick
