If I were to choose, I would choose toddy palm over Dua Nuoc (Loog jag in Thai).
Young toddy palm fruit (we call them seeds) have translucent color similar to Dua Nuoc but a bit clearer. It’s softer, easier to chew, juicy, sweet and refreshing. Loog jag is definitely chewier but still fun to eat. I likes its perfumy smell, too.
Yes, I really enjoyed eating the toddy palm jelly seed pulp. The syrup and sugar extracted from the tree is wonderful. It has a rich caramel flavor, great for cooking. Fresh syrup is hard to find except in regions where it’s grown, but I’ve seen the sugar as blocks at Asian markets.
The fresh syrup is excellent for making alcohol (ask hard cider?). Home made alcohol made from Toddy palm syrup is known in central Thailand. I’ve never tried it but it’s a legend.
If you let the fruit (not the soft seeds we eat) ripen, we can extract orange pulp from it and use it to make special dessert with fragrance and natural orange color…
Chinese New Year is coming up soon. Too bad that you and I are not in Vietnam outdoor market right now with all the fresh tropical fruits.
Trai Chum Ruot
Phyllanthus acidus, known as the Otaheite gooseberry, Malay gooseberry, Tahitian gooseberry … called ceremai or cerama), South Vietnam (called chùm ruột
Tony
That’s also called Star gooseberries. Mostly sour. It is very prolific when it comes to fruit setting.
I love candied Chum Ruot! My cousin’s house had a tree. I’d eat the fruit fresh, even though they were quite tart.
I’m going to NYC to visit a friend this weekend, so I’ll be able to go to the New Year markets there. Maybe there will be some interesting fruit to bring home.
These pictures of an outdoor market in my hometown, gets me excited for when I go visit in May.
May visit is just right. Hot but fruit are in season. I like the weather in Dec-Jan but not many fruit are available. If they are, I have to pay out of season’s prices.
Ripe mangoes.
And increasingly popular in the US, mango with coconut cream abd sticky rice.
@clarkinks, You like ripe mangoes. You may want to try making that sweetened sticky rice.
That sounds delicious! Yes I eat a lot of mango! It’s one of my favorites! Never saw so many mangoes in one place!
Yes, May is a good time for my favorite fruits, but I can get those winter time star apples. I miss the large variety of mangos available. Here is an assortment at the market. I really like the little mangoes. There is even a town named after these little mangoes.
The common mango variety available in Krung Thep is of high quality. I ate a lot of mango sticky rice when I visited.
@clarkinks, hope you will visit one of the countries in southeast Asia one of these days.
I like green mangoes as much as ripe ones. The not-sour green mangoes. I don’t know how to describe in English the taste of this type of green mangoes. It is fun to eat and is very addictive.
really nice. While cashew seeds(nuts) are generally of the same quality, the “cashew apples” seem to vary in quality, and a superb variety is at least as refreshing as a good quality mango.
below is another in the mango/cashew family which is so addictive. Could eat these by the bucket!
*there’s something about edible species within the poison ivy family which is so refreshing…
Raf, had you tried them in the Phillippines?
@tonyOmahaz5 and @PharmerDrewee do you have them in Vietnam?
I can eat them by kilos, another fruit that is hard to stop eating them.
Yep. It tasted not too sweet but spongy texture to me. It kinda cute with the flesh busted out of the shell when ripened.
Tony
I’ve never seen this fruit before. What time of the year does it ripen? The shape reminds me of a tamarind, one of my favorite childhood fruit.
It called Trai Keo in Vietnam.
Tony
That’s why it is called Makam (tamarind) and add the word Tate to differentiate between the two.
It looks like tamarind but does not taste like it at all. It is like Tony said, somewhat spongy. Green ones can have astringency taste to it. Once the fruit turn pink or even red, they are sweet.
Their season is in April, May but can be available in small amounts about now. In each section, there is one small black seeds. Seeds are not edible but are used like chips in children’s games.
Another favorite fruit in my hometown called Trai Trung Ca , or Muntingia calabura very tasty little fruit. Joel Real also liked it.
Tony
This is a fun fruit to eat. There used to be a lot of these trees growing by the streets of my hometown as shade trees. We’d pick them as we walk along and snacked. The sticky seeds give it the Vietnamese name “fish egg fruit”.
