This week I'd like to persuade you to love tamarind trees. If you don't have one, grow one. If you already have one, don't ever cut it down. Tamarind trees are remarkably versatile and robust and don't require very much attention. They can even survive heavy floods. Tamarind trees are excellent species for shades. Sometimes sunlight barely gets through. Flesh from mature pods is just what you need to make tamarind paste. You just have to squeeze it well.
Such tartness is perfect for many Thai dishes. Young tamarind leaves are used for cooking as well.
The tamarind tree also represents the passage of time it's been through. If you see a large tamarind tree anywhere, chances are those locations have long been inhabited by people. Our forefathers usually planted tamarind trees because of their versatility.
In later generations, tamarind trees were cut down only for making cutting boards. It is a long-established belief that endures today that tamarind tree makes the best cutting boards. There are industrial factories all over the country (most of them are in the northeastern region) that produce tamarind tree chopping boards.
Manufacturers travel far and wide to buy tamarind trees. More and more cutting boards are sold to both households and restaurant establishments.
Tamarind trees ideal for producing cutting boards are neither too old nor too large as the trunks are still intact and sturdy. The trunk is the only part used for making cutting boards. Branches are chopped up to be sold as fuel wood.
Cutting boards made from tamarind trees come in different sizes and shapes. But all must be round and bulky. Heavy-duty chopping blocks are especially efficient for tasks like chopping up chicken, duck or pork.
Various types of cutting boards are available for different kitchen tasks, but sometimes having many cutting boards turns into a burden. The smaller the board, the more kitchen space saved.
For regular households, restaurants or food stalls, countertops are usually not very spacious and storage space is needed for something else as well.
TASTY: If you love grilled catfish with nam pla waan (sweet and salty sauce) and sadao luak (boiled neem), part of the credit goes to tamarind juice in that delicious sauce.
The cook usually uses only one board for everything from cutting fish, pork, chicken and vegetables to bruising and cutting up herbs and chillies. Using a bulky, heavy cutting block makes cutting and slicing job more convenient. But after that you'll have to lift the whole thing to wash, and it takes time to dry.
The one-cutting-board-fits-all-jobs approach means you're accumulating both the odour and bacteria, making yourself or people consuming your food more susceptible to foodborne illnesses.
We'll leave the cutting board here. I want to explain more about the versatility of the tamarind tree. Let's start with the leaves. Many Thai dishes utilise the young, tender leaves to impart their pleasant, tart flavour to the dish.
Examples are tom yam with pla salid (gourami) and young tamarind leaves, and grilled pla salid cooked with coconut milk, shallot and young tamarind leaves. As popularity for the leaves grows, farmers in Phetchaburi plant tamarind trees and pick out the young leaves for sale, a comparatively easy task when the tree is still not very high.
The large tamarind trees grown in the backyard orchard yield fruits all year round. When the pods turn mature, you use a long stick to pick them from the tree, crack open and keep only the flesh.
The tamarind is then rolled into lumps and packaged for sale. Some would deseed the tamarind first to get a better price for it. Rolling tamarind flesh is a good side job both for the elderly and the young to earn extra money in their free time.
WISDOM: Some elderly cooks like to roll tamarind flesh to use the juice in a delicious sauce for many dishes.
Tamarind lumps are squeezed with water to make nam makaam piak, or tamarind juice. Some English cookbooks refer to it as tamarind paste to highlight its semi-solid texture. Bring it to a boil, let cool and store in clean, airtight containers. It keeps for weeks in the freezer.
Tamarind juice is incredibly useful in Thai kitchens. Its unique tart flavour and aroma are different from what you get from a lime.
In some Thai dishes tamarind juice is a good substitute for lime. Tom priew with fresh mackerel cooked by seafarers living in certain areas is actually a close cousin of tom yam that uses tamarind instead of lime juice. It's different but delicious.
Some classic Thai dishes are simply incomplete without tamarind juice. Such dishes are grilled catfish with sadao luak (boiled neem) and nam pla waan (sweet and salty sauce), khai luk keuy (fried, hard-boiled eggs topped with fried shallots and tamarind sauce), miang kham (little morsels of fresh herbs and dried prawns topped with sauce). Sauces for all those dishes feature tamarind juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, and fried shallots or garlic. That's a great flavour, perfectly balanced and simply delicious.
Many yam (spicy salads) recipes (usually salads with wing beans, acacia and banana blossom) usually call for tamarind juice in the dressing together with palm sugar, fish sauce and naam prik pao (roasted chilli paste). Fried sliced shallots are sprinkled on top. That's definitely a decent yam dish.
A good bowl of gaeng kua or gaeng phet (red curry) needs a hint of sourness. That's where tamarind juice came in. Tom khem (salty and sweet stew with pla tabien (carp) and pla tu (mackerel) also needs tamarind juice. These are some of the dishes that require the tang and sweetness of tamarind.
That's all about the importance of tamarind trees. Over its long life, tamarind is incredibly useful.
However, cutting it down for making cutting boards or fuel wood means that we never realised how useful the tree is. Today there are some other choices of material to make cutting boards. Modern cutting boards are light, handy and easy to wash and store. The relatively inexpensive price means you can buy one for meat and another for fruits and vegetables. Plastic or rubber wood ones are good for the job.
Let's change the traditional belief that says tamarind tree cutting board is simply the best. Such ideas will only eat up our valuable resource of the good old tamarind tree. n
