Dr. Okra

Image reference: http://www.vegetablesinfo.com/okra

I was trying to find out how Okra (American) or Bhendi (Hindi) came to be called Lady’s Finger. I still have not found a plausible answer despite checking various online dictionaries and thesauri along with the usual Google searches. Nonetheless, it was not an exercise in vain as I soon was reading articles, blogs, and research documents on this great vegetable; the fact that its mucilage is a turn-off for many people notwithstanding! Interestingly, Bhendi is of the Hibiscus Family (Scientific Name: Abelmoschus Esculentus) and is flowering plant which grows rather rapidly. It’s a perennial, and therefore, available round the year.

It has a controversial history and the story of how it spread around the world is quite fascinating. It seems to have originated in Africa and spread to Asia and the Middle East, and later to the Americas on-board slave ships. The Europeans don’t seem to have taken to it but most other peoples around the world welcomed the vegetable, with all its slickness, aboard their palate! I could not find the exact date of its arrival on the sub-continent shores but it seems to have made its way through the middle-east. Indians, of course, have adopted it in their diet and there is hardly a community which does not dish out a tasty Bhendi fare. For a quick glance at its anecdotal history check out this excellent piece by Vikram Doctor: (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/ladys-finger-how-it-grew-into-one-of-the-worlds-most-versatile-veggies/articleshow/20463186.cms).

The medical benefits range from stabilizing blood-sugar levels to helping prevent constipation and from binding excess cholesterol and toxins to being an excellent agent for feeding probiotic bacteria in the intestinal tract. It seems to even work on people who are feeling weak and exhausted or are suffering from depression. The specific medical ailments that it addresses are the following: Acid Reflux, Constipation, Asthma, Atherosclerosis (Heart Disease), Colo-rectal Cancer, Capillary fragility, Cataract, Cholesterol, High Homocysteine and Multiple Sclerosis. If such a wide range of afflictions can be taken on by the slender Okra, either in prevention or in cure, we have no choice but to salute it! For a more detailed discussion on the health benefits that are attributed to Bhendi, and the list is pretty exhaustive, please read this very informative blog by S. V. Saibaba (http://svsaibaba.blogspot.in/2011/11/health-benefits-of-okra-ladys-finger.html) who in turn, has based his facts primarily on the research of Ms. Sylvia Zook, Ph.D (Nutrition), University of Illinois, USA.

The injection of Okra in your diet can only do good for you, though the best benefits can be derived if eaten raw or in a slight cooked form. Okra has been glorified by many: American Food Writer, Robb Walsh, entitled an essay on Okra entitled “Pods of the Gods”. In praise of soul food Roy Blount Jr. wrote a famous song on Okra; the last two lines are at their bluesy best:

"You can have strip pokra
Give me a nice girl and a dish of okra"

So, the next time you are in the market and turn up your nose at the Lady’s Finger be very discreet. And, yes, I still have not discovered how the term Lady’s Finger was actually invented. If anyone out there does, please send me the information.

Tickled by the Rambutan

The rambutan (as seen in the Ooty veggie market)

In continuance to the homage made to the Mangosteen a few weeks ago, another exotic fruit to catch my fancy was the Rambutan. It is also called Ramboostan in the local markets. It is reddish (when ripe) in colour and looks very much like a lychee. The only major difference is that the outer skin is very hairy; in Malay ‘rambut’ means hair. On the inside it is a fleshy pearl coloured pod with a single seed; and is sweet-sour to the taste. There is a website: www.rambutan.com which offers information on the genus (Nephelium Lappaceum), and how to go about the proper process of eating it!

The Rambutan trees are medium sized evergreens and are a non-climacteric variety, i.e. they ripen only when on the tree. In fact the fruits taste better and survive longer when sold complete with the fruits still on the cut branches. Indigenous to the Malay Archipelago, Indonesia and the Philippines it also grows in Sri Lanka, Burma, India and Thailand. The Rambutan does not seem to have done as well as the Mangosteen in terms of captivating the taste buds of Queen Victoria; and the explorers and horticulturists of her time. Without much support from the west its trade has been very limited, though the fruit has reached Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Australia for cultivation purposes. It seems that traders in the south-east Asian region have given it a major economic push and it succeeds well in these parts.

In India the Rambutan is mostly grown in the Travancore region in southern Kerala. It was brought their by people who had earlier migrated from there to Singapore and Malaysia but who still retained ties to the land. Places where active cultivation thrives are Maramon, Kozhencherry, Ayroor, Ranny, Konni and Mallappally. There is good demand for them in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and prices per kilo are in the Rs. 150-200 range. No wonder that Kerala is just the place for it because the trees grow best within 10 – 15 degrees of the equator at a height of around 1600 ft. MSL. This, of course, just like the Mangosteen, puts paid to my desire to grow them in an orchard within our project in the Nilgiris. I believe Rambutan jams and jellies are heavenly; but, I guess, much like the popular movie title, Heaven Can Wait!

Romancing the Mangosteen

Mangosteen at the Ooty Market

Our Nilgiris project is essentially an agri-community which will be producing food-crops on site, apart from other livelihood initiatives. While we are trying to identify the land and discover what all we can grow we take excursions into the local markets in the Nilgiris to get ideas. On a recent trip to Ooty we chanced upon the vegetable market which is a riot of colours at this time of the year. Yellow zucchini, red radish, purple cabbage, orange carrot, blue beans and the usual greens were there in profusion. The fruits were not far behind – reddish-orange rambutan, brown sapota, and the royal mangosteen was present in a dark purple blush.

I must admit that I had never tasted the mangosteen .Though I had heard that it was an exotic fruit; I had neither seen a picture nor was prepared for its purple exterior. The vendors who called it ‘mangustan’ did not make the connection easy but finally I had a mangosteen in my hands. Incidentally, mangustan is not incorrect at all; the Spanish people call it ‘mangostan’. Shared one with friends right then and there, and all three of us were blown away by the tangy sweet taste. I immediately decided to explore if it was possible to grow this fruit in our backyard, i.e. The Nilgiris Project.

First, a little bit of history and folklore. It seems that the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) originated in the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas. It is very popular in Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Philippines, and other parts of Asia as it thrives on tropical weather. There is a fantastic website (www.mangosteen.com) which charmingly lists both the documented history and the folklore of the mangosteen. The Brits, as usual, claim that they were the ones to popularize the fruit in the west. It seems that the fruit was first grown in a heated greenhouse in England by John Ivison, the gardener of the Duke of Northumberland, in 1855. David Fairchild, plant collector and botanist extraordinaire, coined the expression “Mangosteen, the queen of tropical fruit’; which, of course, has been subsequently used to describe fruits such as the mango, breadfruit, pineapple, peach and many others, by quietly dropping the ‘tropical’ from the epithet. There are tales of how Queen Victoria offered to pay 100 pounds to anyone who could provide her with access to a fresh mangosteen...but such tales have no corroboration whatsoever!

There are many who have tried to describe the exquisite taste. I will use the words of two intrepid explorers who had the privilege of tasting the fruit and have left behind memorable quotes.

"...an abundant white, juicy pulp, soft, sweet, slightly acidulated, and with a delicate, delicious flavour, which recalls that of a fine peach, muscatel grapes, and something peculiar and indescribable which no other fruit has." [Odoardo Beccari]
"The mangosteen has only one fault; it is impossible to eat enough of it, but, strictly speaking, perhaps that is a defect in the eater rather than in the fruit." [Eric Mjöberg]

But that is not all. It seems the fruit has a ton of health benefits. The pericarp (rind) when dried and ground is an antidote for dysentery, fever and a variety of other illnesses. Modern medicinal research indicates that the naturally occurring xanthomes (polyphenolic compounds) in the fruit have antioxidant properties which are efficacious for treating hypertension, cardio-vascular diseases and thrombosis. The list goes on; it is anti almost any disease of your choice! Wow, this fruit seems to have it all.

Learning about the health benefits only added to the resolve of growing it in our own project. But the last part of my investigation literally proved that I was barking up the wrong slope! The trees take at least seven years to bear fruit [and that is not the problem]; it is grown in India but is restricted to a few areas in the lower slopes of the Nilgiris (300 m to 1000 m) and in the Malabar and Tirunelvelli districts. Hmm....our project is likely to be located at around MSL 2000 m! Another case of ‘so near and yet so far.’ Well, I’ll just drive downhill when I feel that urge to sink my teeth into a luscious mangosteen pod.