So, some notes on making the curry paste. The reason that we start with water is that this allows the water soluble elements in the ingredients to get out into solution. The next reason is that the presence of water in the mixture helps to temper the temperature fluctuations during the cooking phase of the process. Since water doesn't phase shift until 100C this allows more time for the cell walls of the ingredients to rupture and release their contents into solution. Another benefit of this temperature control is that by keeping the ingredients below 100C this gives time for the conversion of some of the indigestible carbohydrates to break down into digestible molecules. At the same time you're also converting complex proteins into their component amino acids, making them able to be detected by the "taste buds" in the mouth. Once the water has been boiled off, the fats present in the mixture will start to precipitate to the surface giving the cook an indication that the biochemical processes during the stewing process have completed. As always, love the content.
Also, a side note on grinding the ingredients. The use of a mortar and pestle is crucial to this since it really breaks down the vegetables by mashing them against the stone, while the blender just chops them really fine.
@@balares Absolutely. This simple change in process can make all the difference in the final product. The difference between a pesto made in a food processor vs one made with a mortar and pestle is night and day.
Nice, I made candles from these when I lived in Kalalau Valley. Inamona is a great condiment. Dark brown roast is essential or it will make you sh*t within the hour. Mix with kosher salt and chili pepper. When strung on a mid rib of coconut it is a good candle. You get about 1/2 an hour per candle. Got to have tongs to remove the burnt relics. Very effective for that first hour of dark. In Hawaii our nights are 10hrs. In Hawaii they were oiled and used in stone oil lamps with tapa wicks.
In this video, Jared goes *serious* for a second, does a close-up, then proclaims: *"This is not a cooking channel"* despite the fact that almost every episode he shares his recipes, cooking tips and actively prepares dishes for all his special fruits and foods, lol. Frickin' *LOVE* this channel. The nutmeg deep dive on 15-Dec-2024 sounds great. Quite difficult to get real mace ( nutmeg aril ) these days, when in the 60s and 70s, you could get it in just about every grocery.
@@splendidcolors Thanks for the tip. We don't have any around us, so we're ordering it online this year. Penzey's does carry it at a local store a ways from our house, but Penzey's doesn't really want half the US population as customers these days, apparently.
It is truly unbelievable how many variants of fruit and nuts there are in the world. Every time I open RUclips I’m astounded you still have content to give
The whole, "gettin' real about it," portion of this video is a HUGE part of why my wife and I love you and your channel so much. I'm almost on my way to having the job I really want which will allow me to do a little bit of traveling for myself, and you're the single biggest inspiration for it. You're why I try (and mostly fail, but it's Buffalo... growing stuff isn't easy here without a greenhouse!) to grow fruit, why I scour the different grocery stores around me for fresh fruit and ingredients I've always wanted to try, and I can't thank you enough! Love ya, man!
You can probably strive to become an expert on hardy stuff like Arctic kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka), red raspberries, Saskatchewan hybrid pie cherries, honeyberries/haskap, rose hips, hybrid grapes (like Beta, which have native, northern species like Vitis riparia in their ancestry), saskatoons, and heirloom crab/apples. I'm not sure about pears and plums, but perhaps some (especially Amerasian hybrids for the plums) would survive. If you have acidic soil, lignonberries and lowbush blueberries would be useful. Maybe those choices aren't very exotic (though you can get really obscure with things like apples that have a lot of genetic diversity; fortunately apples are the easiest fruit trees in the USA for buying scionwood and grafting your own), but they will feed your family (assuming you also eat meat and vegetables, of course).
Les Hiddens, "The Bush Tucker Man" talks about candle nuts in a couple of episodes. He uses them to light up his camp in an older episode...and in the crossover episode with Ray Mears he discusses how the Australian army tested the edibility of candle nuts for pilots downed in the outback. He explains that they took several pilots and gave each an increasing number of nuts to see how many it took to give you the runs. According to Hiddens, "Thanks to Lt. Andy Hastings we know it it takes eight nuts."
When I saw the nut burning at the start of the video I thought of that Bush Tucker Man episode, it was a very memorable outro with the credits rolling as the strings of nuts light up the camp.
3:58 When he mentions "Noni," I can see the expression of disgust on your face. It's like you're hearing someone say the name of your most hated enemy, lol.
As a former resident of HI and a Disney fan, when they were building Aulani, I would take pictures of certain items and one of them that I saw I said they are using kukui nuts on a skewer and it would be used like torches along the different walk ways that I could see. Once it was opened, I was 100% correct as they wanted to represent so much of Hawaiian culture and kukui/candle nut was tightly woven into their day to day life for light at night.
20:20 Jared "I don't like this at ALL, I will not use it, it tastes like soap." [Holds up extremely large quantity of said rare ingredient, with no explanation of how or why you have it]. As always, love the inexplicable quirkiness of your videos!
in another reply "The Asian supermarket I go to annoyingly only sold them in a big pack. I bought them thinking I'd be making a LOT of soups and salads. Then I discovered they taste like soap" so thats fun
I lived in Malaysia, this laksa you making is called "Curry Laksa (vegetarian)". We had many types of laksa in every state in the country, had their own version, so I hope non-Malaysian will understand deeply, and will not go into the wrong laksa making. In the state of Johor Bahru we had pasta based laksa (Yup !, pasta version)
Curry laksa is actually just another name for curry mee. And in curry mee there is ((traditionally)) no kesum leaves. The laksa that he's making is Melaka Nyonya laksa or laksa lemak (kinda). If you say curry laksa for Nyonya laksa then that is a misnomer. Why is it specifically Melaka nyonya laksa? Because Penang nyonya laksa is fish-based (laksa lemak/laksa Siam; which is the coconut milk version of assam laksa) whereas Melaka's is chicken/prawn-based
This is called kemiri in Indonesian. It's been used for millennia in Indonesia as ink for palm leaf manuscripts. The nut is burnt and the released oil and carbon is rubbed on inscribed letters on palm leaves. It's then wiped and the oil and carbon mixture remains in the inscriptions.
Looking at Oahu from offshore or on a plane, the gulches running up into the mountains are outlined by kukui trees, which grow along the stream beds, and are a distinctively light green color, contrasting with the darker green foliage of the other vegetation. The nuts accumulate at the bottom of the gulch, which makes bushwhacking your way up the valley exciting--the nuts act as ball bearings underfoot. The nuts polish to a lovely dark brown color and are strung into leis, very attractive when worn with an aloha shirt or muumuu.
The Asian supermarket I go to annoyingly only sold them in a big pack. I bought them thinking I'd be making a LOT of soups and salads. Then I discovered they taste like soap. 🤦♂️
20 dried chilies 10 candle nuts 8 stalks of lemongrass 1 torch ginger 12 shallots 5 garlic 2 turmeric 5 finger chilies Lol, made me think of the 12 days of Christmas song. Probably would have been funny 😂😂😂
So basically its oil, but in solid form. Pretty neat, and I can also see why it has such a... reputation for the runs. The fact that it self emulsifies is super cool as well. Really needs to be more popular tbh.
Ahhhhh, you used basmati rice in the poke, not short grain sushi rice, and that fundamentally changes the poke! For those that eat poke, the right rice is SERIOUS business.
When I was younger, I used to light a lot of things I was eating on fire, just to see how well they burned, and what fire would do to their flavor. It was actually how I got the idea to try roasting Brazil nuts, and from there, eventually creating roasted Brazil nut pesto.
Thai MIL says even people in Thailand use the cans of curry paste they don't really make it themselves at home >_< and if you put just a little bit of water in the paste it helps it cook and boils away fast. Like a tablespoon at a time
That looks amazing!! Maybe the word 'velvety' could be another way to describe that incredible mouth-feel... Btw Polish speaking here, and you pronounce that veg seasoning 've-GHE-tah'... Na zdrowia!!
Hello Jarah once l got candle nuts in a package of plastic bags in an Asia shop for the first time probably in the 80s l ate them raw l couldn’t get out of the toilet all day long never ever ever will l eat candle nuts ever ever again from your mate Eddie the wild jungle fruit hunter love your shows cheers guys.
The emulsifier theory makes sense to me, the color and silky texture of the liquid seem a lot like an emulsion. Kind of like what happens when you mix soy lecithin/sodium citrate and a bit of oil in water. Garlic, mustard, and eggs are also common emulsifiers. You might be able to create a vegan mayonnaise with it, though you would need some added flavoring.
There's something about canoe plants ... he idea of finding groves of mature candle nuts planted by Melanesian pioneers... that fascinates me, and I don't know why, considering that many of the world's crops have been spread by human pioneering populations around the world
@WeirdExplorer Hey sir! Glad to see this programe still going strong.!To me,you are in the same grouping as my favorite PBS shows growing up. Informative,personable,and totally cutting edge,hehehee. And with no grants from Helena Rubenstein.😂❤ Love to you.
The laksa looks delicious! The late Euell Gibbons in his book Beachcomber's Handbook, mentions the candlenut as something Hawaiian beachcombers could forage for, but he didn't care much for it.
That soup sounds fantastic. I know you can't because of health problems, but what you describe with the mouth feel sounds a lot like adding collagen to soups/stews/broths/sauces
Candlenut (kemiri) is one of the secret ingredient of nasi goreng tektek, at least in Jakarta. So when you made nasi goreng at home but the taste still a bit off from those hawkers, try adding this.
I have that gene that makes regular cilantro taste like soap and now I'm morbidly curious to try laksa leaves to see if they would have an even more intense soap taste. lol
Alternatively, there's culantro (sometimes called Mexican cilantro) which is said to taste like cilantro but without soapiness, and also keep its taste when dried. Doesn't look like cilantro at all, kind of just regular leaves. Found some at a local Asian market weirdly (still no clue why they had it there) so maybe its not so hard to get a hold of.
@@brandon9172 My local (California) Asian groceries also sell this in the deli trays and saran wrap. In the farmers' market at the Asian mall, you can get all these herbs fresh, too!
you can burn almost every dehydrated food and the amount of total heat it gives off until its fully burned is a good indicator to how many calories it has. the more total heat it gave off during combustion the more calories the food had. technically everything that burns contains calories its just that our human body cannot extract the calories from certain fuels such as wood, diesel, gasoline etc. but some organisms actually can extract the calories from these fuels if you add water to them. if you have a bottle of diesel and water, even in darkness you can observe microorganisms starting to form between the diesel and water that utilize the calories from the diesel and yes plastics contain calories too and yes there have been bacteria and fungi discovered in landfills that eat plastics such as PET and all that without creating specialised micro organisms with genetic engineering in the lab, that just show how life eventually finds a way to utilize energy. even light technically contains calories and technically the calories in the candle nut or pretty much all foods was sunlight from a few months ago. thats also why you can see algae and cyanobacteria grow in 0 calorie water if you give the water enough light. and the sunlight originates from nuclear fusion that turns mass into energy. energy can also be turned back to mass. technically mass and energy in our universe are the same thing E=mc² and where did our universe get its energy from? well no human currently knows the answer to that and everyone who pretends to know the answer for that is a liar, just sad to see so many religious peope claiming to know the answer to why the universe exists. the truth is no human on this planet at this moment knows the answer to that
Had some for 20 years rattling around and just looked them up a few weeks ago. Polishing one. Filed it first then sanded, nice mottled pattern. Be careful near the top, the cavity has a shoulder and gets thin. The hour long light is the candle not the one nut with the palm frond skewer that they are stacked up on, about 8 or ten, can't hold dozens without getting floppy. You and LaserPig use the same background music btw.
@WeirdExplorer The first usage is in context with the Balinese and Javanese palm leaf manuscripts, and the second usage applies more to curry pastes than the brewing, pickling, or snack spice mixes
Its so interesting theres another plant that has the cilantro soap taste effect but on someone not usually effected by it heh 3:58 The passion behind that shake The existence of New York and big american cities still puzzles me 16:40 NO WAY we got Electro Swing on Weird Explorer
You could start doing this more often. Where you don't just show off an exotic fruit, nut, plant but show how they're used to make different dishes so that your viewers could try it if they wanted. I know that you often talk about things made with the subject of the video but this is one of the few times that you've actually demonstrated how to use it for your viewers. While I think all your videos are great, this just takes it to the next level. If it makes the video too long you could always just make a separate video on usage.
That is not necessarily true. That would be OK for soft, pulpy things like tomatoes, however, ifthe pieces are too large, they won’t be able to move inside the processor bowl. Also things with long fibers like the lemongrass need to be chopped short pieces so you don’t get long fiber strings in the final paste.
candle nut is closely related to tung, and as far as i can tell it's quite a good oil to rub onto wood directly from the nut the vietnamese cilantro/mint, or _laksa leaf,_ is the thing that signals i'm eating vietnamese food, much like cumin is for mexican. i don't think it tastes soapy in the context of the dish; just a bit odd. definitely recommend
Wut if u add ground-up candlenut to da premade laksa paste then make the broth Also good job on the laksa paste and the pseudo-poke looked nice too keep it up love the channel
Funny, I expected stuff like the torch ginger (and of course the candle nuts) when you said that the ingredients are hard to get. But everything else, including fresh lemongrass, tumeric, galangal, and chiles is available in every asia store I know …
You can add gelatine to get that silky soup if you don't have time to simmer bones. That's usually where that quality comes from. French onion soup is a good example.
Definitely not vegan but what you made looks very good. Always looking for new foods to try but here in Ohio I don't think those ingredients would be accessible.
Just grab the paste online. There are versions with shrimp paste in it too. But if you haven't had that you might not like it. You can make a version with meat too, usually it's chicken or pork.
the laksa paste ingredients, other than the torch ginger and candle nut are quite easy to find in most bigger US cities and making something like this instead of package imo tastes far better. I’m from Myanmar and cook traditional Burmese and Thai foods everyday. If you’re used to eating homemade food eating those packaged things aren’t enjoyable.
Hi Jared, do you think you could review beech nuts somewhere in the future? I've tried one out of curiosity and they too taste similar to almonds, but for some reason I've only heard of boars and squirrels eating them
In the 1970's there was a University of Hawaii professor who created a bio fuel from Candle nuts ( kukui nut ). The fuel required very little processing other than pressing ( squeezing) the nuts and simple filtering to get a final product It was his goal to use it in jet engines since it burned cleaner than petrol fuel and didn't have corrosive residues that petrol fuels have. He envisioned planes from the continents coming in on petrol fuel and flying home with ( his term) Aloha fuel. Unfortunately the oil industry nixed that idea along with the FAA by spreading falsehoods about the benefits of the organic oil. Recently the US military has switched to bio fuel in many types of ships, aircraft, and even turbine engine tanks. They now say that there is less damage and wear to the turbine engines and it helps to save on maintenance costs. Kukui nut grow in many poorer nutrient soils and at least here in Hawaii, the have a range from sea level to about 1500 feet. There is not a lot of tending or maintenance to the tree for production. It could have been a great cash crop.
the taste is a genetic thing. happens with some spices. you either have the gene that encodes a special receptor, or you don't. if you don't have it, it tastes soapy. happens... this also means, that nobody should be offended, if someone tries a meal and doesn't like it. sometimes it's the genetics.
Man I wish I still lived in NY, I'd definitely be there. Hard for me to imagine what that tastes like, my mind keeps trying to compare it to the various spice mixes from India. Very different in a lot of ways.
Can believe the story for lights, if they throw off that many nuts and most are dirty you'd probably have a lot punched through with rods and then let them burn down that way. Heck you could carry one with you just as a lightsource.
I wonder if you can swap the Vietnamese coriander for culantro/ngò gai/Eryngium foetidum, which also tastes like cilantro. Also kinda weird how those three plants taste almost the same.
You kept saying not to bother just buy the mix, and I would yell out WRONG. When you said what do you have to prove by making it yourself? My answer was IT TASTES better. I'm glad you came to the same conclusion. Homemade is always better, especially if you FOLLOW AUNTIE"S RECIPE to the T
See me LIVE along with my all new documentary about Nutmeg! More information available here: nutmegscreeningnyc.eventbrite.com
Will be interesting you Jared review fingers Chili 🌶️! And extinguisher with ice cream and milk 🥛!
I dont see where to buy the laksa paste in description
This is so exciting!!! I hope I can go!!
Nutmeg, it is the knowledge nut. carfull.
Please do some nutmeg collaboration with Townsends the RUclipsr!!! 🇺🇸🤠🥥
Your use of "This Little Light of Mine" did not go unappreciated
So, some notes on making the curry paste. The reason that we start with water is that this allows the water soluble elements in the ingredients to get out into solution. The next reason is that the presence of water in the mixture helps to temper the temperature fluctuations during the cooking phase of the process. Since water doesn't phase shift until 100C this allows more time for the cell walls of the ingredients to rupture and release their contents into solution. Another benefit of this temperature control is that by keeping the ingredients below 100C this gives time for the conversion of some of the indigestible carbohydrates to break down into digestible molecules. At the same time you're also converting complex proteins into their component amino acids, making them able to be detected by the "taste buds" in the mouth. Once the water has been boiled off, the fats present in the mixture will start to precipitate to the surface giving the cook an indication that the biochemical processes during the stewing process have completed.
As always, love the content.
Also, a side note on grinding the ingredients. The use of a mortar and pestle is crucial to this since it really breaks down the vegetables by mashing them against the stone, while the blender just chops them really fine.
@@balares Absolutely. This simple change in process can make all the difference in the final product. The difference between a pesto made in a food processor vs one made with a mortar and pestle is night and day.
Oh wow. That's very useful knowledge. Thanks!
Nice, I made candles from these when I lived in Kalalau Valley. Inamona is a great condiment. Dark brown roast is essential or it will make you sh*t within the hour. Mix with kosher salt and chili pepper. When strung on a mid rib of coconut it is a good candle. You get about 1/2 an hour per candle. Got to have tongs to remove the burnt relics. Very effective for that first hour of dark. In Hawaii our nights are 10hrs. In Hawaii they were oiled and used in stone oil lamps with tapa wicks.
In this video, Jared goes *serious* for a second, does a close-up, then proclaims: *"This is not a cooking channel"* despite the fact that almost every episode he shares his recipes, cooking tips and actively prepares dishes for all his special fruits and foods, lol. Frickin' *LOVE* this channel. The nutmeg deep dive on 15-Dec-2024 sounds great. Quite difficult to get real mace ( nutmeg aril ) these days, when in the 60s and 70s, you could get it in just about every grocery.
I found mace at an Indian grocery.
@@splendidcolors Thanks for the tip. We don't have any around us, so we're ordering it online this year. Penzey's does carry it at a local store a ways from our house, but Penzey's doesn't really want half the US population as customers these days, apparently.
It is truly unbelievable how many variants of fruit and nuts there are in the world. Every time I open RUclips I’m astounded you still have content to give
Its endless... 😅😅
The whole, "gettin' real about it," portion of this video is a HUGE part of why my wife and I love you and your channel so much. I'm almost on my way to having the job I really want which will allow me to do a little bit of traveling for myself, and you're the single biggest inspiration for it. You're why I try (and mostly fail, but it's Buffalo... growing stuff isn't easy here without a greenhouse!) to grow fruit, why I scour the different grocery stores around me for fresh fruit and ingredients I've always wanted to try, and I can't thank you enough! Love ya, man!
So glad to hear it. Good luck with the new job. hope it works out 🎉
You can probably strive to become an expert on hardy stuff like Arctic kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka), red raspberries, Saskatchewan hybrid pie cherries, honeyberries/haskap, rose hips, hybrid grapes (like Beta, which have native, northern species like Vitis riparia in their ancestry), saskatoons, and heirloom crab/apples. I'm not sure about pears and plums, but perhaps some (especially Amerasian hybrids for the plums) would survive. If you have acidic soil, lignonberries and lowbush blueberries would be useful. Maybe those choices aren't very exotic (though you can get really obscure with things like apples that have a lot of genetic diversity; fortunately apples are the easiest fruit trees in the USA for buying scionwood and grafting your own), but they will feed your family (assuming you also eat meat and vegetables, of course).
Les Hiddens, "The Bush Tucker Man" talks about candle nuts in a couple of episodes. He uses them to light up his camp in an older episode...and in the crossover episode with Ray Mears he discusses how the Australian army tested the edibility of candle nuts for pilots downed in the outback. He explains that they took several pilots and gave each an increasing number of nuts to see how many it took to give you the runs. According to Hiddens, "Thanks to Lt. Andy Hastings we know it it takes eight nuts."
When I saw the nut burning at the start of the video I thought of that Bush Tucker Man episode, it was a very memorable outro with the credits rolling as the strings of nuts light up the camp.
You can light these on fire? That’s nuts!
3:58 When he mentions "Noni," I can see the expression of disgust on your face. It's like you're hearing someone say the name of your most hated enemy, lol.
Anyone who has smelled and tasted noni made the same face.
@AwesomeFish12 I've heard bad things, and the description alone is enough to help me understand the reaction.
As a former resident of HI and a Disney fan, when they were building Aulani, I would take pictures of certain items and one of them that I saw I said they are using kukui nuts on a skewer and it would be used like torches along the different walk ways that I could see. Once it was opened, I was 100% correct as they wanted to represent so much of Hawaiian culture and kukui/candle nut was tightly woven into their day to day life for light at night.
20:20 Jared "I don't like this at ALL, I will not use it, it tastes like soap."
[Holds up extremely large quantity of said rare ingredient, with no explanation of how or why you have it].
As always, love the inexplicable quirkiness of your videos!
in another reply
"The Asian supermarket I go to annoyingly only sold them in a big pack. I bought them thinking I'd be making a LOT of soups and salads. Then I discovered they taste like soap"
so thats fun
You made my Croatian heart happy when you got Vegeta out ❤️
I lived in Malaysia, this laksa you making is called "Curry Laksa (vegetarian)".
We had many types of laksa in every state in the country, had their own version, so I hope non-Malaysian will understand deeply, and will not go into the wrong laksa making.
In the state of Johor Bahru we had pasta based laksa (Yup !, pasta version)
I haven't had johor laksa! I've had Assam laksa and another kind in Borneo (Sarawak style maybe?). Both were so good. I want to try them all
Curry laksa is actually just another name for curry mee. And in curry mee there is ((traditionally)) no kesum leaves. The laksa that he's making is Melaka Nyonya laksa or laksa lemak (kinda). If you say curry laksa for Nyonya laksa then that is a misnomer. Why is it specifically Melaka nyonya laksa? Because Penang nyonya laksa is fish-based (laksa lemak/laksa Siam; which is the coconut milk version of assam laksa) whereas Melaka's is chicken/prawn-based
This is called kemiri in Indonesian. It's been used for millennia in Indonesia as ink for palm leaf manuscripts. The nut is burnt and the released oil and carbon is rubbed on inscribed letters on palm leaves. It's then wiped and the oil and carbon mixture remains in the inscriptions.
Ahhh I was just looking at some Indonesian recipes that called for candlenut! And the you release this video! Perfect timing!
I love a cooking demonstration that tells me not to try doing it and asks me what I'm trying to prove 😂
Looking at Oahu from offshore or on a plane, the gulches running up into the mountains are outlined by kukui trees, which grow along the stream beds, and are a distinctively light green color, contrasting with the darker green foliage of the other vegetation. The nuts accumulate at the bottom of the gulch, which makes bushwhacking your way up the valley exciting--the nuts act as ball bearings underfoot. The nuts polish to a lovely dark brown color and are strung into leis, very attractive when worn with an aloha shirt or muumuu.
Candlenut is also called Kukui nut in Hawaii, I have a lei made of them. Have also found them as drift seeds washed up on the beach in Florida.
That was a big bunch of laksa leaves for demonstration purposes only. Ha! Great video
The Asian supermarket I go to annoyingly only sold them in a big pack. I bought them thinking I'd be making a LOT of soups and salads. Then I discovered they taste like soap. 🤦♂️
@@WeirdExplorerDid you heard about pasta laksa
Looking forward to the Nutmeg extravaganza 🎉
Will the Townshends make a guest appearance?
20 dried chilies
10 candle nuts
8 stalks of lemongrass
1 torch ginger
12 shallots
5 garlic
2 turmeric
5 finger chilies
Lol, made me think of the 12 days of Christmas song. Probably would have been funny 😂😂😂
@@jenniferbethparishwhite688 Looks like a list of ingredients for a curry paste here
So basically its oil, but in solid form. Pretty neat, and I can also see why it has such a... reputation for the runs. The fact that it self emulsifies is super cool as well. Really needs to be more popular tbh.
It isn't the oil content that causes the runs; it's an effect of certain natural compounds in the nuts.
Ahhhhh, you used basmati rice in the poke, not short grain sushi rice, and that fundamentally changes the poke! For those that eat poke, the right rice is SERIOUS business.
I was hoping nobody would notice that...😅
He says "something vaguely resembling poke".
@@Cory_ That's the nice bit about the word "vaguely." It does quite a lot of the heavy lifting.
@WeirdExplorer how dare you! 🙃
I personally like Botan rice. What brand of sushi rice do you prefer? 💚
Quickly becoming one of my favorite cooking science channels!
When I was younger, I used to light a lot of things I was eating on fire, just to see how well they burned, and what fire would do to their flavor. It was actually how I got the idea to try roasting Brazil nuts, and from there, eventually creating roasted Brazil nut pesto.
best informational food channel on youtube right here! love your stuff man! its just fantastic!
Appreciate the love! Glad you're enjoying the channel.
Thai MIL says even people in Thailand use the cans of curry paste they don't really make it themselves at home >_< and if you put just a little bit of water in the paste it helps it cook and boils away fast. Like a tablespoon at a time
yup! Grabbing one of those cans of curry paste is a fun and easy way to try new dishes.
@@WeirdExplorer you can always add candlenut to the store mix!
That looks amazing!! Maybe the word 'velvety' could be another way to describe that incredible mouth-feel... Btw Polish speaking here, and you pronounce that veg seasoning 've-GHE-tah'... Na zdrowia!!
Such an amazing fruit! Imagine the Garden of Eden being filled with all sorts of beautiful, amazing types of fruits. ❤
So glad you love LAKSA. Malaysian here. Love your contents❤
Indonesians in Java use this nut to make candlenut curry called Opor, if you can find an Indonesian restaurant in NYC you should try it
End music being This Little Light Of Mine was a nice touch
Hello Jarah once l got candle nuts in a package of plastic bags in an Asia shop for the first time probably in the 80s l ate them raw l couldn’t get out of the toilet all day long never ever ever will l eat candle nuts ever ever again from your mate Eddie the wild jungle fruit hunter love your shows cheers guys.
Heya Eddie. That sounds miserable, but a lesson well learned 😄
@@WeirdExplorer i remember reading the bag and seeing may cause violent purging and it scared me so I never ate them
That’s the fruit hunter life sadly
Nice instrumental "this little light of mine" during the outro
The emulsifier theory makes sense to me, the color and silky texture of the liquid seem a lot like an emulsion. Kind of like what happens when you mix soy lecithin/sodium citrate and a bit of oil in water. Garlic, mustard, and eggs are also common emulsifiers.
You might be able to create a vegan mayonnaise with it, though you would need some added flavoring.
that's a good idea
soy lecithin gives me migraines
There's something about canoe plants ... he idea of finding groves of mature candle nuts planted by Melanesian pioneers... that fascinates me, and I don't know why, considering that many of the world's crops have been spread by human pioneering populations around the world
I agree! It really is fascinating to see the evidence of history when it's still alive and carrying on after so long.
@WeirdExplorer Hey sir! Glad to see this programe still going strong.!To me,you are in the same grouping as my favorite PBS shows growing up. Informative,personable,and totally cutting edge,hehehee.
And with no grants from Helena Rubenstein.😂❤
Love to you.
The laksa looks delicious! The late Euell Gibbons in his book Beachcomber's Handbook, mentions the candlenut as something Hawaiian beachcombers could forage for, but he didn't care much for it.
So interesting how the mouth feel changes between cornstarch and the candle nut
Great episode! Very silky 🙂
I have been hoping you will cover this! I have seen a lot of these trees around where I live but people don't seem to use it in any way...
That soup sounds fantastic. I know you can't because of health problems, but what you describe with the mouth feel sounds a lot like adding collagen to soups/stews/broths/sauces
Candlenut (kemiri) is one of the secret ingredient of nasi goreng tektek, at least in Jakarta. So when you made nasi goreng at home but the taste still a bit off from those hawkers, try adding this.
Nah you’re real for that pulling out the laksa packet.
I have that gene that makes regular cilantro taste like soap and now I'm morbidly curious to try laksa leaves to see if they would have an even more intense soap taste. lol
Or... maybe it won't taste like soap at all and you can use it as a replacement for cilantro! nah. it's going to be soapy.
Alternatively, there's culantro (sometimes called Mexican cilantro) which is said to taste like cilantro but without soapiness, and also keep its taste when dried. Doesn't look like cilantro at all, kind of just regular leaves. Found some at a local Asian market weirdly (still no clue why they had it there) so maybe its not so hard to get a hold of.
@StuffandThings_
It's a fairly common herb in east and southeast Asia. I know its common in Vietnam. That's why they'd have it.
@@brandon9172 My local (California) Asian groceries also sell this in the deli trays and saran wrap. In the farmers' market at the Asian mall, you can get all these herbs fresh, too!
you can burn almost every dehydrated food and the amount of total heat it gives off until its fully burned is a good indicator to how many calories it has. the more total heat it gave off during combustion the more calories the food had. technically everything that burns contains calories its just that our human body cannot extract the calories from certain fuels such as wood, diesel, gasoline etc. but some organisms actually can extract the calories from these fuels if you add water to them. if you have a bottle of diesel and water, even in darkness you can observe microorganisms starting to form between the diesel and water that utilize the calories from the diesel and yes plastics contain calories too and yes there have been bacteria and fungi discovered in landfills that eat plastics such as PET and all that without creating specialised micro organisms with genetic engineering in the lab, that just show how life eventually finds a way to utilize energy. even light technically contains calories and technically the calories in the candle nut or pretty much all foods was sunlight from a few months ago. thats also why you can see algae and cyanobacteria grow in 0 calorie water if you give the water enough light. and the sunlight originates from nuclear fusion that turns mass into energy. energy can also be turned back to mass. technically mass and energy in our universe are the same thing E=mc² and where did our universe get its energy from? well no human currently knows the answer to that and everyone who pretends to know the answer for that is a liar, just sad to see so many religious peope claiming to know the answer to why the universe exists. the truth is no human on this planet at this moment knows the answer to that
Had some for 20 years rattling around and just looked them up a few weeks ago. Polishing one. Filed it first then sanded, nice mottled pattern. Be careful near the top, the cavity has a shoulder and gets thin.
The hour long light is the candle not the one nut with the palm frond skewer that they are stacked up on, about 8 or ten, can't hold dozens without getting floppy.
You and LaserPig use the same background music btw.
I use burnt candlenut as ink for palm leaf manuscripts, while toasted candlenuts are used alongside cashews in my spice mixes
I never thought of using them like that, I’ll have to try it.
@WeirdExplorer The first usage is in context with the Balinese and Javanese palm leaf manuscripts, and the second usage applies more to curry pastes than the brewing, pickling, or snack spice mixes
Vegeta is basically the eastern European MSG :D
Good stuff! So versatile for those without a large spice and herb inventory.
he pronounced it wrong
Its so interesting theres another plant that has the cilantro soap taste effect but on someone not usually effected by it heh
3:58 The passion behind that shake
The existence of New York and big american cities still puzzles me
16:40 NO WAY we got Electro Swing on Weird Explorer
Yessss another deep dive episode
I dig the choice of music.
17:13 Will It Ketchup? Will It Hollandaise?
Fascinating, thanks Jared!
this video was amazing and so interesting!(as always), just hope the trail didn't have dead grass...
lmao at "this little light of mine" played as the background music instrumental
I recently tasted a bit of fly amanita, and you tasting the raw candlenut (and spitting, just like I did) made me feel like less of a weirdo. thanks
You could start doing this more often.
Where you don't just show off an exotic fruit, nut, plant but show how they're used to make different dishes so that your viewers could try it if they wanted. I know that you often talk about things made with the subject of the video but this is one of the few times that you've actually demonstrated how to use it for your viewers.
While I think all your videos are great, this just takes it to the next level. If it makes the video too long you could always just make a separate video on usage.
You know.....the nice thing about a food processor, is that you don't need to chop up everything first. hahaha.
That is not necessarily true. That would be OK for soft, pulpy things like tomatoes, however, ifthe pieces are too large, they won’t be able to move inside the processor bowl. Also things with long fibers like the lemongrass need to be chopped short pieces so you don’t get long fiber strings in the final paste.
candle nut is closely related to tung, and as far as i can tell it's quite a good oil to rub onto wood directly from the nut
the vietnamese cilantro/mint, or _laksa leaf,_ is the thing that signals i'm eating vietnamese food, much like cumin is for mexican. i don't think it tastes soapy in the context of the dish; just a bit odd. definitely recommend
Thats amaazing! Love from Morocco 🇲🇦
Top notch video per usual
The silliness comes from the thickeners, okra mucus and nut starch will do the trick
Mind you, other types of starch can also do the same
Also most of the flavouring powder has tons of msg. You can control the amount by using kombu instead.
Wut if u add ground-up candlenut to da premade laksa paste then make the broth
Also good job on the laksa paste and the pseudo-poke looked nice too keep it up love the channel
Yes! You could roast them well and grind them into a paste.
Cool episode! I'm going to try making Laksa.
Funny, I expected stuff like the torch ginger (and of course the candle nuts) when you said that the ingredients are hard to get.
But everything else, including fresh lemongrass, tumeric, galangal, and chiles is available in every asia store I know …
You can add gelatine to get that silky soup if you don't have time to simmer bones. That's usually where that quality comes from. French onion soup is a good example.
Definitely not vegan but what you made looks very good. Always looking for new foods to try but here in Ohio I don't think those ingredients would be accessible.
Just grab the paste online. There are versions with shrimp paste in it too. But if you haven't had that you might not like it. You can make a version with meat too, usually it's chicken or pork.
the laksa paste ingredients, other than the torch ginger and candle nut are quite easy to find in most bigger US cities and making something like this instead of package imo tastes far better. I’m from Myanmar and cook traditional Burmese and Thai foods everyday. If you’re used to eating homemade food eating those packaged things aren’t enjoyable.
Hi Jared, do you think you could review beech nuts somewhere in the future? I've tried one out of curiosity and they too taste similar to almonds, but for some reason I've only heard of boars and squirrels eating them
Great suggestion!
Probably a bit fiddly for people to harvest & deshell, but many people do eat sunflower seeds, and those are also small.
The word you are looking for is "unctuous." :-)
Yes, but I loved the word SILKINESS that came gliding over the screen. 😄🤭👌
In the 1970's there was a University of Hawaii professor who created a bio fuel from Candle nuts ( kukui nut ). The fuel required very little processing other than pressing ( squeezing) the nuts and simple filtering to get a final product
It was his goal to use it in jet engines since it burned cleaner than petrol fuel and didn't have corrosive residues that petrol fuels have. He envisioned planes from the continents coming in on petrol fuel and flying home with ( his term) Aloha fuel. Unfortunately the oil industry nixed that idea along with the FAA by spreading falsehoods about the benefits of the organic oil. Recently the US military has switched to bio fuel in many types of ships, aircraft, and even turbine engine tanks. They now say that there is less damage and wear to the turbine engines and it helps to save on maintenance costs.
Kukui nut grow in many poorer nutrient soils and at least here in Hawaii, the have a range from sea level to about 1500 feet. There is not a lot of tending or maintenance to the tree for production. It could have been a great cash crop.
the taste is a genetic thing. happens with some spices. you either have the gene that encodes a special receptor, or you don't. if you don't have it, it tastes soapy.
happens...
this also means, that nobody should be offended, if someone tries a meal and doesn't like it. sometimes it's the genetics.
Man I wish I still lived in NY, I'd definitely be there. Hard for me to imagine what that tastes like, my mind keeps trying to compare it to the various spice mixes from India. Very different in a lot of ways.
You could grate the palm sugar to help it dissolve faster(?)
so it makes the same kind of difference, as a spoon of good dijon mustard does to a vinaigrette style salad dressing with fresh herbs.
My curiosity is piqued now about possibly using Candlenut oil for soap making. Perhaps large manufacturers could substitute it for Palm oil
I wonder if you could make a holder that would limit how fast they burn to make them last longer.
Do the outsides burn?
Wish I lived closer! I would totally come!
Candlenut contains various substances that might stimulate the bowels and cause sweating. It also contains toxic chemicals, such as cyanide.
I wish I lived closer so I could go to the show!
Can believe the story for lights, if they throw off that many nuts and most are dirty you'd probably have a lot punched through with rods and then let them burn down that way. Heck you could carry one with you just as a lightsource.
Do they extract the oil & use for shortening, salad dressing, frying, etc.
Do check out kam heong & veg versions of it, prep to be surprised by the variety of ways to use the cooking style
How do they smell when they're burning??
I wonder if you can swap the Vietnamese coriander for culantro/ngò gai/Eryngium foetidum, which also tastes like cilantro. Also kinda weird how those three plants taste almost the same.
great video thanks !
Mother nature never misses a beat😂
You kept saying not to bother just buy the mix, and I would yell out WRONG. When you said what do you have to prove by making it yourself? My answer was IT TASTES better. I'm glad you came to the same conclusion. Homemade is always better, especially if you FOLLOW AUNTIE"S RECIPE to the T
So i learn a new word today! Silkyness 🤣🤣🥰
The mouth feel you described sounds a lot like how collagen works in soups. Candlenuts could be a vegan collagen
Its related to the Eubhorbia family, I didn't expect it to be edible when cooked but nevertheless its cool.
He has returned🤍 He greets us with erudition🤎The Steven is wise🤍The Steven is pure🤎He wishes to shed his corporeal existence🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎🤍🤎
Is this Aleurites molucanna(?) Related to tung oil trees (Aleurites fordii?)
@26:55 how Jared describes mouth feel.........suss 😂
So what if you use the store bought curry paste and mix in candle nut yourself?
Chestnut flour might be an adequate substitute (?)
"you don't want to drink oil" tell that to everybody's favorite oat-milk brand!
I'll stick with macadamia nuts, thanks anyway. I've eaten candlenut before, and ... yeah, they make great little candles...