![]() ![]() The Cashew Fruit really looks yummy, but can you actually eat it?Ībsolutely, cashew fruit is perfectly safe to eat without risking any health effect, except when you’re allergic to certain compounds in it like vicilin and legumin which are known to trigger allergic reactions in people, or decide to consume the cashew nuts raw.Ĭashew fruit is very aromatic, juicy, and sweet with the insides feeling fibrous and stringy when bitten. This article will touch more about the cashew nut as it progresses. When it starts getting ripe, the color changes from green to red or golden yellow.Īt the bottom of the fruit, there’s a bean shaped greyish seed known as the cashew nut.Ĭare has to be taken when handling it because the insides contain some chemicals that could cause rashes when they come in contact with the skin. On top of that, I got a few proper whole Cashew fruits from my neighbor's tree with the seed/nut still firmly stuck on the fruit, so that you get an idea what the fruit looks like.Īs you can see in the picture the orange/yellow Cashew fruit is on top and the nut in the shell in hanging downwards.Cashew is a small oval (or pear) shaped fruit, covered in a smooth waxy layer and can grow as big as 11 centimeters in length. I had gone to the Mapusa market to buy a kg of raw Cashew nuts (about 100 INR = ~1,50 €). It makes sense to collect the nuts and to roast them yourself at home (if you have a garden or veranda or something similar and of course if the raw un-shelled nuts are available in your surrounding). On top of that, it takes a while to grow these fruits, in fact, they grow only once a year, so that the nuts (which are, in the botanic society, considered seeds) can be harvested, dried and roasted for the commercial sale. The cashew tree thrives in a tropical climate, therefore, the cultivation is still limited to countries near the equator. You might recall how I had explained in my Spice Garden post how Vasco da Gamma and his lot had ended up here in Goa, India. Yes there is a dark side to the cashew nut production and yes it should be addressed to alleviate the peoples living conditions in India.Īfter all, a lot of people are depending on the export of cashews and they make a living with it.īuy Fair-trade Cashews if you enjoy cashews!Ĭashews actually originated in South America and only thanks to the much traveling Portuguese conquerors was it introduced to the tropical Indian coastline state Goa. ![]() You can read the report about the cashew nut problem in the Guardian and the Telegraph. So while roasting small quantities is not a problem at all, this changes when people work, badly equipped and without gloves, to roast massive amounts of cashews while being paid almost nothing. ![]() You see, the cashew nut" has a special shell which has toxic properties in the roasting process and you need to roast to get the hard outer shell of the main seed/nut inside. This may sound good to you, but there is a problem with that. This started to change in the past 10 years when demand couldn't be fulfilled and the world decided to commercialize cashews en masse so that the western world could have a "bite", while reducing the buying rate of the luxury nut extremely. While cashew "nuts" have been very expensive and were rather rare some 10+ years ago, this somehow changed and we ended up with more choices of acquiring a few grams of precious cashews in our local super stores.įormer Portuguese colonies would call the cashew fruit (yes there is a cashew fruit!) and cashews their day to day staple, the rest of the world remained oblivious to its existence for a long time, due to the high rates in the supermarkets. Cashews have turned, in the last few years, into a prime snack time choice for health-conscious people in the western world.Ĭashew nuts have always been regarded as a small luxury and people use them in sweets and curries. ![]()
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