It’s interesting (and maybe not that surprising) that most of these (or related) greens are used in India too - I didn’t eat them until a few years ago (stupid child that I was), but they are individually and collectively delicious! Amaranth, colocasia, and many more.
I wonder if you might be able to figure out the specific flavor / type you’re in search of by shopping at an indian store. Many of these are available fresh, but all are available frozen these days.
No. I grow water spinach periodically and it turns an unpleasant brown-green if cooked, braised for long periods. The texture and flavor was different.
I have a potted Dasheen/Taro/Malanga in the greenhouse. It’s hot enough where I can plant it in the ground now. That might be the one used in Grenada and Carriacou. We ate at a restaurant on Carriacou called Callaloo, where I first tried it. The sign outside had a painting of either dasheen/taro (Colocasia esculenta) or Xanthosoma. Maybe I’ll try cooking some young Dasheen leaves and very carefully testing it before using it in a recipe.
This video on making Callaloo is gold!
When he’s peeling the taro/dasheen leaf stems (petioles) I’m not sure if he’s saying “sticky” or “stinging”. Again, raphides are a concern. This from Wiki:
" Young taro leaves and stems can be eaten after boiling twice to remove the acrid flavor. The leaves are a good source of vitamins A and C and contain more protein than the corms.
In its raw form, the plant is toxic due to the presence of calcium oxalate,[51][52] and the presence of needle-shaped raphides in the plant cells. However, the toxin can be minimized and the tuber rendered palatable by cooking,[53] or by steeping in cold water overnight."
The steeping in cold water does not sound plausible. Boiling twice and changing the water is also likely false; the raphides do not dissolve quickly. Long cooking makes more sense and the blender (or swizzle stick) might also help break up the crystals.
In any case, small tastings! I’ve been tortured by raphides in Arisaema triphylla (Jack-in-the-Pulpit). The stinging sensation lasts for hours! Dasheen has been cultivated for so long, I’m sure it was selected for lower raphide content. Still…
Me too! If raphides are concentrated in the petiole skin, it would make sense from a plant trying to protect itself by putting itching, stinging crystals near the surface.
Right now, the dasheen/taro is too small to get a bunch of leaves without setting it back. It’s pot-bound in a gallon pot.
The plan is to plant it in some rich soil so it can grow much larger before cutting leaves off and trying them out. You never know, this one may strictly be used for the starchy root.
I’ve made callaloo with a green Amaranth that grows wild here. It wasn’t as good as what I had in Grenada and Carriacou. You could taste the “seasoning” peppers, and the pepper heat level was low, probably for tourists! With luck, the hot peppers and seasoning peppers from Grenada will ripen about the same time as the dasheen is ready, likely late August-September.
We had taro / colocasia growing wild behind my grandparents’ house – when the leaves were picked to cook, they removed any that caused skin itching, because they would also likely cause throat itching (this also happens occasionally with the tuber, very unpleasant if you eat one that’s like that, but you can usually tell when you’re peeling it).
Loved the video for so many reasons - have not seen the stems peeled and cooked before (we discard them), love that he gives attribution to where he learned a technique, and - best of all - his “swizzle”! We use a wooden version of that (called ravai or madani or other regional words) for dal and buttermilk - the “pre-whisk” my mom calls it.
I found this when I looked up an image, and I think my mom will get a laugh out of the “antique” price - pretty sure we’ve got a couple older than this lying around
Outside of Alaska, the PNW must be the last region in the country to get their strawberries this year. It was a wet, cold and miserable June full of worry.
They are finally here - yay!
These are Rainier strawberries, a June-bearing variety and the only variety we grow. We have been growing them for about 15 years, and not found any other local variety which can hold a candle to these, flavor-wise and production-wise. The season lasts about 3 weeks, but we take advantage of varying micro-climates in our yard and will enjoy them fresh for close to 6 weeks. We’ll stuff our freezer full at the same time.
Red all the way through (no white core), the Rainiers won’t hold up to transporting to a commercial market. The only way to get them is to grow them. So we do.
From all the great links you’ve both been posting (and other reading on callaloo, because who doesn’t need a good rabbit hole when they’re procrastinating from real work!) it’s clear that callaloo originates in West Africa.
What was interesting to me is that these (mostly wild-growing) greens are lumped under a collective name in India too, which is completely unrelated - “saag” in the north can be spinach or mustard greens or other greens, “bhaji” in the west is a generic word for both “vegetable” but also a similar collective word for the same greens covered under “callaloo”.
It was a coincidence that the Spruce article mentions “bhajgee” – which must have come from the much-later Indian arrivals using a word they knew to identify the callaloo they encountered in the region.
I was thinking what was interesting was the overlap between people and cuisines in the Caribbean from India and from countries in Africa. Especially Trinidad. I am always amazed when things I thought of as West Indian turn out to be Indian. Roti and “curry” are probably my favorite examples. And then of course, all the other “colony” stuff.
Speaking of which: According to Julie Sahni, “Classic Indian Cooking”, “Curry is the Western pronunciation of the Indian word kari which can mean one of two things: the sweet aromatic leaves of the kari plant … or the southern cooking technique of preparing stir-fried vegetables such as Green Beans with coconut and Black Mustard Seeds.”
She goes on to explain the British merchants wanted an easy way to replicate the flavors of Indian cuisine, but lacked the skills and know-how. Instead, “kari podi” (spice blend powders/ground masalas) morphed into the word “curry”. Now, the word is used everywhere for all sorts of dishes; even Thai spice blends are called curries in English.
Back to the kari plant: if that’s the same as curry leaf, Murraya koenigii, I beg to differ on the aromatic leaves being “sweet”; they smell a bit like burnt matches! Savory, yes, and they, like Hing, add an essential flavor to certain dishes. What is more surprising is that Curry Leaf is super sensitive to drying out, coming from India! Most woody plants will wilt, maybe drop leaves and recover if they get too dry. Murraya dies if it defoliates; so one better water it if it wilts. I’ve killed two and the same has happened to some friends. It must thrive in jungle areas. My plants are outside and love the rank humidity and heat. They’re even starting to make offshoots/suckers.
In English, greens is the catch-all word for leafy, cooked vegetables. There’s yet another callaloo plant, a Pokeweed relative, Phytolacca octandra. I read about it in Economic Botany. If memory serves, the berries kill snails!
Did the “skin itching” have any relevance to how old the leaves were?
I believe you need an actual (hard) stem cutting, but I’m not certain.
When I buy them at the indian store, they come on the stem in a bag, but those are the skinny upper stems.
There are nurseries who sell plants - in Northern California probably not hard to find given the southern indian population that has settled in the Bay Area.
I have 2 karipatta plants that are doing well. If and when they flower next I am willing to gather the mature fruits and mail them to you both. You can extract the seeds and try propagation. Mine have never propagated small side saplings or I would offer those to you.
Hints on propagation: https://www.agrifarming.in/growing-curry-leaf-plant-from-cuttings-seed-kadi-patta
Some local specialty nurseries in warmer regions have seedlings for sale. A green-thumbed aunty in my area here has seedlings each spring. Maybe you can find similar in your area?
