Hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, beechnuts: our forests and farmyards are full of nut trees that enrich our diet. But for the really tasty nuts we have to go to warmer regions. Which of course we like to do.
We were going to crack a tough nut. No, not figuratively, but literally. In our hands we held nuts that we had picked from the tree and dried in the sun. Macadamia nuts to be precise. The location: Queensland, Australia.
The technique: hold the cap in an iron grip with a pipe wrench and give it a firm tap with a hammer with a flat end. Also not with brute force, otherwise you will pulverize the nut itself. And you don’t want that, because it is one of the tastiest nuts in the world. And the most expensive, because they are difficult to crack and the macadamia tree only produces nuts after about ten years.
The macadamia tree is native to Australia, and the country’s indigenous inhabitants have used the fruit since time immemorial. But the first English settlers were particularly attracted by its beauty: the tree blossoms in long strings of white, yellow or pink flowers, depending on the species. And of the tree – which is related to the beautiful flowering protea species from South Africa – there are only two that produce tasty nuts, Macadamia integrifolia and M. tetraphylla.
A chic, but expensive drink nut
The first ‘Westerner’ to discover the nut was the British botanist Allan Cunningham, who collected seeds and nuts everywhere during his world travels. Later, the German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller would name the tree after a friend of his, the Scottish physician John MacAdam. The macadamia nut has only been grown on a commercial scale since the end of the nineteenth century. Australia is still the largest producer, but South Africa is hot on its heels. Because the nut is in high demand. It is a chic, but expensive drink nut.
Because macadamia nuts are mud fat – about 75 percent, with a sugar content of 8 percent – they feel wonderful on the tongue. And that fat is also largely unsaturated, so the healthy fats. The oil – the fat – that can be squeezed out appears to be quite helpful in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. You can also use the oil for frying or to prepare salad. The latest craze: make vegan creamy cheese with it, with some lemon juice, yeast flakes and oat drink and a hand blender.
With a glass of vin santo or a sweeter sherry
Personally, we prefer to eat macadamia nuts with an aperitif, with a glass of vin santo or a sweeter sherry. With that aperitif we also add that other chic nut, the cashew – which, because of its fattiness, can also be mixed into the vegan cheese. The cashew is not a real nut, but a stone fruit.
The acaju tree, or cashew tree – also called the elephant louse tree for some unclear reason – prefers to grow in tropical regions. It originally comes from Brazil, but Portuguese colonists brought it to Africa and Asia in the sixteenth century. And it is now flourishing there: Vietnam and India are the largest producers, followed by Ivory Coast.
The cashew grows in a special way. Various false fruits appear on the tree after flowering. These are the swollen fruit stems, which come in red or yellow. Those fruit stalks are called cashew apples. They smell wonderfully sweet and sour. They are also edible, soft in texture and deliciously juicy. But we won’t find those false fruits here, because they wither a few days after being picked.
Fortunately, we came across them as caju at the Salvador market, where they were in great demand among customers. Tasty, a bit meaty. In cashew cultivation, the pseudofruits are sometimes pressed into juice, which with a bit of luck we can find at the better-stocked stores. Caju contains up to four times as much vitamin C as an orange.
The true cashew nut grows as a curved or kidney-shaped appendage to the cashew apple or caju. A woody shell contains the seed, the actual ‘nut’. Harvesting them is quite a labor-intensive job. It is done manually and must be handled carefully, because the peel contains a toxic substance, cardol, which can seriously irritate human skin. The indigenous population uses the oil in their natural medicine to heal warts and corns. To clarify its toxic power: cardol is also used to combat termites.
In your salad, curry or stir-fry dishes
Fortunately, the cashew itself is a lot healthier, although its raw form also contains some toxins. Almost all of these are neutralized during processing. First, the cashew nut is roasted in the shell so that the bark can be cracked more easily. The shell is then broken, usually mechanically but sometimes manually, and the nut can be removed. One last peel off and the nut is ready to eat.
And then the party begins. You eat them as a snack, salted or unsalted, or use them, like many Asians, in your salad, curry or stir-fry dishes. Finally, you can also make ‘milk’ or ‘butter’ from it by pressing out the fat. You can even make flour from it: in Brazil they also eat the most delicious cashew bread. And those cashews are also healthy. Proteins, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals such as magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and iron. Good for the red blood cells.
A nut – a real one this time – that we also encountered on the Brazilian market is the Brazil nut. Not really one of the best-known nuts from our nut bowl, but a standard part of our bags of student oats. The castanho do para , ‘chestnut from Pará’ comes from the region of the same name in the north of Brazil, near Suriname (where a district is also called that, but it is not adjacent to the other Pará). It grows on a tree, the Bertholletia excelsa, that grows up to 50 meters high in the Amazon rainforest.
Nice and tropical, nice and moist, that’s what the tree likes. Also a beautiful place for the growth of a special orchid, which also attracts equally special bee species for pollinating the flowers of the tree blossom. Which can then grow in more than a year into a fruit that weighs up to 2 kilos and has a wooden bark. The fruit contains the nuts themselves, usually about ten to twenty of them, arranged like the segments of an orange.
Brazil nuts are not only particularly tasty – they have a mild, creamy taste reminiscent of coconut – but also have a high nutritional value. Consider good (unsaturated) fats, fiber, iron and protein and magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, vitamin E and vitamin B1. Moreover, it lowers your LDL cholesterol, the ‘bad’ cholesterol.
Don’t try to get rid of an entire bowl at once
The mineral selenium deserves a special mention, which contains a high amount of antioxidants, good for our thyroid function and the immune system. But be careful: one Brazil nut already contains enough selenium for our daily needs, so don’t immediately consume a whole bowl of it with your aperitif. Fifty pieces are guaranteed to cause poisoning, we would recommend a maximum of five, although the seller at the Salvador market laughed and popped a handful of Brazil nuts into his mouth. Apparently the native population can handle it quite well.
If you do have that aperitif with nuts, remember that the harvest of Brazil nuts has an impact on the environment and local communities. The tree is hardly cultivated, but the nuts come almost exclusively from collection in the wild forests. The Brazil nut tree grows slowly – it can live up to 500 years – and has a complex life cycle, which can make restoration of logged areas in the Amazon forest difficult. There are initiatives to promote the sustainability of Brazil nut production and to support fair trade practices. Whose deed.