Potatoes, tea bags and sheaves of corn
Have you ever thought about how our well-known tropical products grow? What about, for example, a few random products such as mango, pineapple, melon or an ordinary peanut?
For the first time I saw a pineapple field I actually realized that it had never occurred to me before that this fruit grows so low to the ground on a relatively small plant.
I can well imagine that a melon, if only because of its weight, does not hang from a tree. A mango orchard was also not strange to me and that the peanut is also called groundnut, says enough about the growth habit. Since the 'discovery' of the pineapple, I have started to orient myself more broadly about crops that I grow on foreign crops journey, and therefore also in Thailand encounter.
The tea bag
Although Thailand is not the most prominent country for coffee and tea, the region above Chiangrai, especially around Mae Salong, enjoys great fame for the so-called Oolong tea from the higher cool mountain area.
In 2005, Mae Salong, also known as Santikhiri, was awarded the OTOP quality mark by the Ministry of Tourism for its quality tea, which is well-known in Thailand. In many places you can test the various types of tea here. And after such a tasting, your eyes really open and you come to the conclusion that the well-known tea bag, which is used in most Dutch households, contains the waste or grit of the tea leaves. In fact, the very least quality, but for the growers a great invention. If you want to enjoy real tea, 'the tea bag' will quickly disappear from the pantry.
TapiocaSheaves of corn
In certain regions of Thailand you see a crop that is not so easy to identify for the non-Asian. Vast fields, where the initially small plants grow to a height of more than a meter. Woody sticks with a not exactly very attractive leaf at the top. Mindful of the pineapple experience, I want to know my own about it and the locals tell me that they are 'potatoes'.
A large field is cleared in one day with a great deal of manpower, consisting mainly of women, and the carrot-shaped 'potatoes' are transported in large trucks. The long woody sticks are stripped of their leaves and set upright like sheaves of corn. These germinate again and, cut into short pieces, provide new plantings.
potatoes
Strangely enough, I have never been able to discover this kind of potato on the market or anywhere else. New research is therefore required. And yes, then the good thing about the business, or rather about the potato, comes to the fore. The fully loaded large trucks transport the harvest directly to the factory. This 'factory' actually consists of a few small buildings and a large concrete surface.
After the potatoes or thick carrots have been washed, they are coarsely ground and spread on the concrete surface to dry in the sun. After this initial processing, the stuff goes to a real factory where it is processed into a final product. You will find this product in every Thai family: Tapioca. The tapioca flour is used as a binder, for baking pancakes, making sweets, and is also an important part of prawn crackers, among other things. This 'potato' is officially called cassava or cassava root.
Take a good look around Thailand. You can see that this product is grown in many places, because less fertile soil is also very suitable for cultivation.
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This root is called “Man Sappalang” in Thailand and yields about 3 bath per kilo for the farmers.
Cassava or tapioca is 90% exported to countries such as the Netherlands, where it is given to pigs. It's also nice to just eat it yourself (just like corn, by the way). Cassava is an easy product, you don't have to do anything for it. It grows like a weed. And after the harvest you cut the old plants into short sticks of 30 to 50 cm and you just put them back in the ground and hopa it grows again. The fact that frequent cassava cultivation exhausts the soil is long-term planning….
By the way, you really don't want to live next to a cassava processing factory.... smells horrible.
What you have to think about with food here, is that the Thai are not very careful with the use of fertilizers and other chemicals.
There are a few reservoirs in the Isaan, surrounded by many fields of course. All the water that flows from these fields ends up in that lake. After research, it turned out that in some of these reservoirs the water is so heavily polluted by fertilizer that it can no longer be used as drinking water.
Chang Noi
Shiploads full of tapioca arrive here in the Netherlands. I know of trials to transfer tapioca into inland vessels in IJmuiden (Hoogovens). This transshipment causes serious nuisance. Dust (from that tapioca). All this is destined for animal feed. Fill this in further…
Sago is a product of tapioca and is still used in Dutch cuisine. Tapioca is a good food in itself but is not that popular.
Cassava (also known as manioc) contains an enormous amount of prussic acid, which is poisonous. That is why it has to be dried in sunlight for a few days, which gives it a pungent smell. So don't just nibble on a cassava root!
Tapioca is a starch extract from cassava.
In my opinion, sago comes from the sago palm and concerns the interior of the trunk. It contains few nutrients, is quite labour-intensive because it has to be mixed with water and is the “poor men's meal” in New Guinea, among others.
Franky, what you write is partly correct. There are two types of casava, bitter and sweet. The zote can be boiled and then baked (telo), the bitter is grated and the hydrogen cyanide is squeezed out. The flour is used to make (bosland creoles) casava bread or quack. (loose form of the casava bread) the Indians make casiri from the prussic acid. An alcoholic drink and to ferment it the family members spit in it (not an Indian story). The bitter casava is also used to make starch (clothing) so that it lasts longer and tighter. be in the fold. The bitter casava is generally larger too..
Well, and because of those Thai potatoes, we as 2 northerners have set up a company in Thailand that currently supplies 80% of the Tapioca factories in Thailand with the machines to extract the starch from the root.
Thailand is the world's largest supplier of tapioca starch.
Furthermore, as already mentioned, you have the Sago flour that comes from the Sago palm.
You also have corn and rice and wheat, from which starch is extracted.
See also an earlier article on the Thailand blog about our company. (Stamex)
I like to cook, both European and Thai and I learned to use tapioca in Thailand, where we stay for 4 months every year.
It is easy to mix with a little water into a paste, does not clump like potato flour often does and is excellent to use to thicken sauces and the like.
I use tapioca in vegetable sauces over cauliflower, broccoli, but also in meat gravy. Great product.