How often do you pause to consider how the food on your table
actually grows from the ground: What kind of plant does it come from,
and how is it processed? Some of the most common foods are also some of
the most remarkable. Chocolate, cashews, pepper corn, baby corn,
cinnamon, wasabi, pineapple, kiwi, sesame seeds, saffron, asparagus. Do
you know how they grow?
1. Cashew
Why are cashews one of the more expensive nuts you can buy? It’s
because each cashew is actually the single seed of a mango-sized fruit
called the cashew apple. The seed hangs from the bottom of the inverted
heart-shaped fruit. Cashews are complicated to process because what we
eat as the nut is encased in two layers of shell—which happen to contain
a toxic oil similar to the toxin in poison ivy. So to get at the edible
part of the nut, the whole thing must first be roasted to destroy the
toxin.
The cashew apple meanwhile is delicate and sweet with a tangy
aftertaste. It’s also high in tannins, which leaves that dry feeling in
your mouth (like eating an underripe banana). In places like Brazil, the
fruit is very popular and eaten fresh or used to make juice, syrup,
wine, and glazed fruit. In some Latin American countries, the fruit is
so prized that the troublesome nuts are thrown away. However, the fruit
is also highly perishable so in other countries, like Thailand, cashew
nuts are the big export product and the troublesome, odd-tasting fruit
is usually discarded.
2. Baby corn
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Baby corn is not a miniature variety of corn as some people
think. It’s actually regular corn that is picked before it’s pollinated
so it never matures. Any variety of corn can be harvested as baby corn.
Sometimes it’s a primary crop, meaning it’s planted to produce baby
corn; or it can be a secondary crop grown as regular sweet corn, with
some being picked early. In either case, the corn stalk must still grow
to about 6 feet before it’s harvested, making it a less than ideal
choice for window-box gardening.
3. Cinnamon
Cinnamon is the inner bark of the semi-tropical Cinnamomun
zeylancium, or Ceylon cinnamon tree, native to Sri Lanka. This is known
as “true” cinnamon. It is often confused with cassia, also called
Chinese or Vietnamese cinnamon. Interestingly, cassia is actually the
dominant type used in commercial production today, so most of the
cinnamon we buy isn’t in fact true cinnamon. True cinnamon is more
aromatic than cassia and has a less assertive flavor. The leaves of both
plants are also fragrant, and are what’s often used to flavor cinnamon
tea.
Cinnamon trees can grow to roughly 50 feet, but are usually kept to
under 8 feet under cultivation. The tree branches are usually what’s cut
for the spice. After the branches are harvested, the farmer will keep
them moist for 1-2 days to make the bark easier to separate. Then the
leaves and twigs are cut off and the outer bark is scraped off. The
precious inner bark is then carefully removed off by slicing underneath
it in long parallel cuts. This is what results in the characteristic
cinnamon curl. Long curls of bark are layered together in bundles
creating the familiar cinnamon stick. After the long sticks are dried,
they are cut down into a convenient, commercial length of a few inches.
4. Chocolate (Cocoa Bean)
Chocolate is made from the dried, fermented beans that grow inside
the fruit of the cocoa tree. The 7- to 14-inch football-shaped pods grow
directly out from the tree’s trunk or on large branches. Inside the
pods, the seeds are surrounded by a light-colored, pulp that is tasty
and sweet, but tastes nothing like chocolate. There are roughly 30-50
seeds in each pod. The seeds start out white or light lavender then turn
darker as they dry and ferment. The beans are further dried in an oven
then crushed in a mill to remove the papery skin leaving behind cacao
nibs, which is the purest form of cacao. It’s processed from there into
the many different forms we buy as chocolate.
5. Wasabi
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Wasabi is a root that grows in cool, moist, mountainous areas or
under a forest canopy in nature. Under cultivation, it is grown in heavy
shade in shallow, cold running water. It can take 3 years for the plant
to reach maturity. Because wasabi is rather difficult and expensive to
grow, much of the so-called wasabi on the market today is fake—it’s
actually a mixture of regular horseradish, mustard, and food coloring.
Fresh grated wasabi naturally forms a creamy paste and is an essential
ingredient for sushi. It also loses its flavor very quickly after
grating if left uncovered. Wasabi leaves can also be eaten and share the
same spicy flavor as the root.
In Japan, sawa wasabi is most expensive because it is grown
naturally. Wasabi is cultivated in Japan, parts of China, Taiwan, Korea,
New Zealand, and some success has been had in the rain forests on the
Oregon Coast and parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and
Tennessee.
Photo via Shutterstock
Next page see: Pineapple, Kiwi, Sesame Seed, Saffron, Asparagus, Peppercorn
6. Pineapple
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Pineapple is remarkably easy to grow. They don’t have usable seeds,
so you can simply cut off the top, or crown, of any pineapple and plant
that. You can also plant the slips (baby plants that grow out of a
mature plant) or suckers. They don’t need much water and can grow in
marginal soil, and even thrive in a pot or tub.
The pineapple plant has a very short, stout stem with a rosette of
long waxy needles that look like ground cover. So the fruit, which grows
upright, appears to grow right out of the ground and each plant only
bears one fruit.
Pineapple takes a long time to flower and fruit, depending on what
part of the plant you start with—12 months for slips and up to 24 months
or more for crowns. But once you have a few pineapples in the garden,
they multiply easily on their own so you’ll have fruit for years to
come.
Pineapple are native to Brazil and Paraguay, but were spread
throughout South and Central America and the West Indies by native
populations. Columbus took the fruit back to Spain and they spread to
rest of the world on sailing ships that carried them to counter scurvy.
The word “pineapple” comes from Spanish explorers who named it “pina”
for pine cone, then the English added “apple” after a juicy fruit they
were familiar with.
7. Kiwi
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Kiwi, also known as “Chinese gooseberry,” is not native to New
Zealand. It originates in China, specifically in the Yangtze River
valley in the north, and Zhejiang Province on the eastern coast. It was
brought to New Zealand in 1904 as a novelty item by a school
headmistress after visiting her missionary sister in China. But by the
end of World War II, it was an important export crop for New Zealand.
Kiwis are actually berries that grow on vines and are cultivated on
arbors similar to grapes. Male and female plants must be grown close
together to bear fruit and the fruit is highly sensitive to weather
changes—a warm or cold spell can kill the whole plant or result in it
producing few flowers. The kiwifruit is also a challenge to pollinate
because bees reportedly don’t find the flowers very attractive.
8. Sesame Seed
The sesame plant is one of the oldest known crops to be cultivated by
humans, going back some 5,000 years. The seeds were popularly eaten by
Roman soldiers to help them replenish.
Sesame grows to 5-6 feet in height; it has broad leaves to collect
plenty of sunlight. Large bell-shaped flowers grow out from the stem and
inside each flower are the seeds. Different colored seeds come from
different varieties of the plant. Sesame seed and oil is used in many
places in the world, particularly the Middle East and Asia, but eating
the sesame leaf is a specialty of Korean cuisine.
9. Saffron
Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. That’s because it
is the dried stigmas of the purple saffron crocus flower. It takes
roughly 75,000 flowers to produce 1 pound of the spice, which is almost
entirely harvested by hand. Fortunately, only a tiny amount is needed in
cooking since adding too much can make the food bitter. Ancient
Egyptians also used this plant to dye clothes.
10. Asparagus
Photo Via Shutterstock
Cultivating asparagus is a long-term proposition. Grown from seed,
asparagus starts out as fern-like plant and takes about 2 years to reach
maturity. You could plant a 1-year-old crown to get a year jumpstart,
but mature plants don’t transplant well. However, once mature, asparagus
is perennial and will grow back each season for 20 years or more. The
mature asparagus shoot can be harvested by cutting it down to about the
diameter of a pencil. It then rests over winter and will grow again in
the spring.
Photos via Shutterstock: (l) Young asparagus fern; (r) Mature asparagus.
11. Peppercorn
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Pepper is the most widely used spice in the world, but have you ever
wondered about the difference between black, white, green, and pink
pepper?
The peppercorn plant, or piper nigrum, is an evergreen vine with dark
green, oval leaves. It grows on trees or trellises under cultivation.
All along the vine hang spikes with clusters of 150 or more berries, or
drupes. The berries start out green and become darker, and spicier, as
they ripen. If they’re picked when green, the flavor is relatively
mild—it’s often cooked in clusters in green curry in Thailand. Most
commonly the berries are picked black and are the peppercorns we’re most
familiar with. White pepper is actually black pepper that’s left to
overripen. When the black shell is removed the inside is white and the
berry is at its spiciest.
Pink peppercorns are from a different plant entirely. They are the
berries of the baies rose plant, also known as the Brazilian pepper
tree. It’s a tall tree with droopy branches from which clusters of
bright pink berries grow. They have lighter peppery taste with a mild
citrus flavor. Being the same size as true peppercorn, they’re often
mixed with the others to make a colorful spice blend.
Source: http://agriculture.einnews.com
