Search Results for East Asia
During the ripening process, the initially yellow fruit is covered more and more with reddish-brown spots until the whole skin is brown.
As long as they are very tender and have barely broke through the soil, the shoots can be prepared as bleached vegetables such as asparagus. Aboveground shoots can be eaten like rhubarb as long as they are not too woody.
The Ligiri, native to East Asia, carries clusters of small berries that taste bitter and tangy. They can be eaten raw or cooked.
They are mostly cooked along with the other ingredients as a whole, so that they release their abundant aromatic oil, but the leaves are too leathery to be eaten.
In their East Asian origin, the fruits are chopped up and drunk as fruit tea, or they are made into canned goods.
The mature, fleshy single fruits of the infructescence is sweet and can be eaten directly or processed into jam.
Under the light green skin of these large, still immature fruits is a white, firm fruit flesh, whose sticky latex quickly turns yellow.
Bai-yo or noni leaves are rich in vitamin A and like the fruits they are also offered as superfood in various forms.
The tubers of this Yam grow far above the ground in the leaf axils of the liana. Nevertheless, these can be quite large and heavy.
The red tissue, which encloses the poisonous seeds, tastes very sweet.
The jelly-like fruit content, which surrounds the disc-shaped seeds, tastes sweet and is a small snack for anytime.
As soon as the small fruits of pheasant berry are ripe and therefore dark brown and soft, they taste intensely like slightly burnt (bitter) caramel.
The strawberries-like red fruits are edible, but taste dull and watery.
Water chestnuts are usually peeled and then cooked. When cooked, the white tuber tissue retains its crunchy consistency, reminiscent of firm apples.
The plant with the beautiful name „fish mint“ has a quite unique, strong taste, which certainly not everyone likes.
Green Luobo can be eaten raw and when cut into thin slices is a decorative addition to a salad.
This wild vegetable, which tastes like a mixture of celery, carrot green and parsley, is particularly popular as an ingredient for green smoothies. The tender leaves also refine salads or stews and spinach.
Rosehips can be used to make fruit tea and Hagebuttenmark. Dried and ground, they even replace flour and can be mixed with it.
Young leaves and stems are edible as vegetables, the small flower buds can be prepared like artichokes.
Chives are finely chopped or cut with scissors, and are used in herb butter, sauces and various other herbal preparations.
Like most wild forms, also those of rye are not particularly productive and are rarely or no longer cultivated today in contrast to the cultivated forms.
The leaves of the curry tree have a „heavy“ aroma, which gives vegetable dishes more substance.
Mainly, the bizarre fruits of the bitter melon are used, but the leaves are also edible…
Boiled, fried or filled and baked, the immature fruits are very appreciated because of their bitterness.
If the sponge gourd, which is also called vietnamese luffa, is still immature, its net-like tissue is not yet lignified and therefore soft and edible.
This huge citrons have little pulp and a thick peel (the white albedo), which is usually candied and added as “succade” to pastry.
To open this fruit, I needed 2 large knives. A saw would have been better, but I didn’t have it at hand. When I spooned out the fruit, my spoon also broke.
The pitaya is best eaten fresh and raw. I like to spoon out the white, sweet fruit pulp from the halved fruit.
The aroma of fresh pandan leaves reminds of vanilla, it is of a heavy sweetness and very intense.
The unripe legume of the Leadtree are particularly appreciated in Southeast Asian cuisine, although the plant originally comes from Central America.
The multiform Buddha’s hand is a special kind of citron.
Hardy Begonia: Begonia grandis x Begonia evansiana Kitchen herb and decoration The pink flowers of Hardy Begonia are a pretty decoration in salad or - sugared- on confectionery. They have a lemony flavour. The yellow stamens of the male flower
The fruits are juicy, which suggests a use for lemonade, marmelade and jelly.
Kumquats are eaten as a whole. They are sweet and tangy and very aromatic.
Specially from the immature fruit (as well from the leaves) of the bitter orange the aromatic oil „Petitgrain“ is won.
Juice and fruit pulp can savoured fresh or processed to jelly and lemonade, if the bitterness is not unpleasant.
The edible fruits of Sinofranchetia are very similar to grapes, but less sweet and with a little leathery skin.
Under the slightly leathery skin is a soft, mealy pulp with a flavour reminiscent of mango and pineapple.
The flesh of this persimmon reminded me of a dried date: it was brown and soft, tasted sweet, perhaps caramel-like, but unfortunately also „not quite fresh“.
Common buckwheat: Fagopyrum esculentum More than just ``Poor man's food`` An important identifying characteristics of the common buckwheat that differentiats from the other buckwheat species is the red stem. Because gluten is absent, buckwheat can not be used alone for
The calamondin has a thin, sweet peel and sour pulp.
The small white tubers have boiled about the consistency of marzipan and a pleasant nutty flavour. They can also be eaten raw, roasted or pickled.
The extraordinary taste reminds of the resin from conifers compensates for the low yield.
The variety comes from Japan and is named after a Japanese tribe (隼 人, “Falcon-People”), who lived on the Kyūshū island during the Nara period.
The very firm, pleasant-smelling and astringent tasting fruits can be cooked and then juiced. For example, a jelly can be prepared from the juice.
The name „Amanatsu“ means „Sweet Summer“. The sun-yellow fruit is about the size of an orange. In Japan iIt is eaten fresh or processed into jam, juice, ice cream, liqueur and wine.
It is still a stubbornly held legend that the fruits of the rowanberry or mountain ash are poisonous. The small fruits are ideal for jam, mash, liqueur…
Date plums can be eaten raw after frost destroyed their adstringency, but they are most eaten dried.
The variety ‘Rotonda bianca sfumata di rosa’ is found in the trade quite rare, typical in our (European) view are the black varieties.
The leaves taste like a mixture of caraway, mint and lemon.
The cross section shows that ripe fruits of this variety no longer contain fruit juice.
Even if the fruits are not productive, they can be eaten fresh from the tree or processed into jam, compote and liqueur. The beautiful flowers can decorate dried tea mixtures.
In times of need, the seeds were used to produce a flour substitute.
The smaller, thin-peeled fruits of Meyer lemon taste very intense and are not as sour as many other varieties. At the same time, they are very juicy.
Although the seeds of the hairy love grass produced in panicles are only about 0,5-0.8 mm in size, they are used as cereals.
The kernel (nucellus) contains a lot of starch (and vitamins), so that a flour can be obtained from them after roasting, with which flat bread is baked or crackers called „emping“ are fried.
Ripe fruits of Beale’s barberry are edible raw or cooked and a jam can be prepared. Dried berries give muesli a fruity note.
From rose hips a fruit tea can be prepared as well as jam („hagebuttenmark, buttenmost“) . Dried and ground, they even can be used as a flour substitute and can be mixed with flour.
Despite its numerous uses, which are also used for medical purposes, Job’s tears are not very popular compared to other cereals. The cultivation is even declining.
Kumquats are eaten as a whole. They are sweet and tangy and very aromatic.
The whole herb, including the deep purple flowers, can be eaten raw as a salad or cooked as leaf vegetables.
The fruits are sweet and have a very aromatic taste. They are best eaten raw.
The small kiwi berries are in their anatomy miniature editions of the common kiwifruit (A. deliciosa) and also have the typical aroma of the large fruits.
After thorough cooking and rinsing, the flowers are also edible and are served with oil and salt.
Despite its higher juice content, Chinese citron can be used in the kitchen like other varieties of citron, such as succade or jam.
As with blood oranges and the red lemon, there are also red pigmented variants of mandarins and clementines.
Sorghum is a staple food in parts of Africa (especially West and East Africa) and India.
The hairy fruits, which grow on very short stems almost directly on the branch, are juicy and soft, slightly sweet and tart.
The colourful fruits of Amur peppervine taste predominantly sweet. They have no intense taste and no acidity.
The white, sweet-tasting pulp inside the pink five-leaf akebia fruits is best eaten while the fruit has not yet opened by itself.
Pomegranate juice is obtained from these fruits, which is then processed into pomegranate wine and grenadine.
The numerous, tiny seeds are collected wildly in times of food scarcity, slightly roasted and ground into a flour from which a thin meal soup or porridge can be prepared.
The berries are compact, the fruits are green when ripe and have a high sugar content.
Despite its bright red berries, Schonburger belongs to the white wines, its quality is compared with Traminer.
The berries of Cabernet Mitos not only have a deep blue, frosted skin, but their pulp is also rich in red pigments, which is not the case with most other grapes.
Pinot Gris is a variety of the common grape vine, which belongs to the white wines although the grape skin has a reddish to grey-violet colour.
Riesling wines are of high quality and easily assume the character of their growing region.
Scheurebe produces excellent dessert wines. But an early harvest leads to extremely unpleasant aromas, which are supposed to remind one of sweat or cat urine.
Rosehips can be used to make fruit tea and Hagebuttenmark.
In contrast to other types of lime, kaffir limes contain little juice, which is why the use of the essential oils in the dish is the focus.
For lemonade, jam, sorbet, in dressings and as a spicy, souring ingredient in spicy as sweet dishes.
The abundant juice of unripe fruit is used for the production of lemonades or fruit juices.
When the fruit ripenes, it turns red, unfortunately it becomes also very mushy. The tindola, as the fruit of the ivy gourd plant is called, is eaten as a fruit-vegetable. Ripe fruits can be candied. In tropical Asia the young shoots are also eaten.
I have only tried the approximately walnut-sized kernels, of which there are usually 3 to 4 in a fruit. They contain a lot of water and have a subtle, coconut-like, sweet taste.
The huge citrons have little fruit pulp and a thick peel (the white albedo), which is usually candied and added to bakery for seasoning.
Brown gram: Vigna mungo (seeds) Used since ancient times The small, dark Brown Grams have been cultivated in India for 3000 to 4000 years. They are cooked in a whole, halved (separate cotyledons) or sprouted. Dried and processed into flour,
In addition to the small, dark black grams, the immature, green pods are also edible as fruit vegetables.
Krachai is closely related to ginger and shares many of its properties as a spice, so that it can be used wherever ginger is needed.
The cultivar ‚Santa Barbara‘ is orange in colour and has a perfume-like aroma and a slightly soapy taste.
Saffron, the „red gold“, is a spice extracted from the flowers of the saffron crocus.
All parts of meadow clover are edible, and a flour made from the ground leaves tastes of vanilla.
The protein (gluten) it contains is not said to have good adhesive properties, but black emmer wheat is nevertheless suitable for baking bread and pastries.
Blackthorn fruits are made into jam, jelly and compote.
Cinnamon is used as „sticks“ or „canels“ (peeled and dried bark, but actually the bast) to flavour a wide variety of dishes and is usually cooked with them.
The highest importance has the aromatic oil, of course, in the perfume production, but also tea (Earl Gray and Lady Gray), confectionery and Lokum are flavored with bergamot oil.
Wild garlic can be collected in the spring from March to the end of April in many places in the forest. There it grows as a dense, dark green carpet.
Aloe vera has been used for some time past in green smoothies, shakes, cocktails, ice cream, desserts and for some other purposes, although the plant is said to be poisonous.
The Shaggy mane is one of the few mushrooms for which no trip into the forest is necessary to collect them, because they are in our midst – even in big cities.
The fresh, yellow fruits still taste astringent. Only in the brown, overripe fruits are the tannins degraded and the honey-sweet, caramel-like taste dominates.
The list of preparation options for eating chestnuts is long…
The seeds of the Black-caraway are mostly roasted. They are slightly bitter and spicy, with an unobtrusive aroma of cumin and roasted sesame seeds.
A striking characteristic of T. sinskajae is also the more compact and „round“ shape of the awns.
The fruits can be cooked to make jam and juice. Raw, on the other hand, they taste very astringent.
The whole herb is used with flowers and stems, both fresh and dried. It goes very well with potato dishes and legumes.
Strong fragrant rose varieties have long been cultivated for the production of rose oil, which is not only used in perfumes, but also in some liqueurs and sugar confectionery.
This red-fleshy variety with the reddish peel is very delicious!
The variety morello cherry (subsp. acida) is well-known and often traded in glass jars, as compotes and jam, and it is an essential ingredient in the Black Forest gateau.
Wild oat is edible and can be valuable in times of need as a famine food.
The black chokeberry contains many vitamins and other important substances in such large quantities that it has also medical significance.
Many plants with aromatic leaves are called “laurel” or “bay”, but none of them taste like true laurel.
In contrast to many other cereals, oats do not need to be peeled, only dehulled. Oats are always a wholemeal product and therefore rich in vitamins, minerals and fibres.
Finely chopped, creeping cinquefoil is suitable as a seasoning herb in salads or dried in herbal salt. In summer the fresh flowers can be used as edible decoration.
In Tibet, the roots are supposed to be eaten comparatively frequently as a nourishing root vegetable. They can be processed fresh or dried for later use. The leaves can be chopped (because they are very fibrous) and added as wild herbs in salads or steamed in oil.
Fruits and leaves of „Monk’s pepper“ work as spices. Especially the hot tasting fruits can be used as a pepper substitute.
The milk thistle is extremely thorny, but culinarily it is like a small artichoke: The base of the bud is edible.
In addition to the flower buds of milk thistle, which are comparable to artichokes in culinary way, the large, wavy leaves with numerous thorns are also edible.
The fruits are small, not particularly juicy and decompose easily, which is why they have not become established as a fruit plant.
The green walnut is the unripe walnut fruit (J. regia) harvested before St John’s Day on 24 June which is processed into a delicacy.
The soft, juicy pulp tastes aromatic of fir, it is tart and resinous, yet very sweet.
The deep red colour of the Red Velvet Okras gets lost during cooking, the fruits turn as green as ordinary okra pods when heated.
If the myrobalan plum is not eaten raw, it can be processed into compote and jam.
Zwetschgen are eaten fresh, processed into zwetschgendatschi tart, schmootsch and as dried fruits.
Few-flowered leek: Allium paradoxum The leek with the bell-shaped flowers Few-flowered leek can grow in a dense, lawn-like stand. It is edible like spring onions, although the "tuber" remains somewhat smaller and the whole plant has a more delicate growth.
Chervil tastes like aniseed or tarragon. It is used to season soups, salads, sauces and herb butter and is one of the seven herbs in Frankfurt’s green sauce.
The fruits of the natal plum, which are red when ripe, have a creamy, soft consistency and taste sweet.
Quinces are rarely eaten raw. They are mainly consumed as jelly, stewed fruit, mush, chutney, schnapps and „dulce de membrillo“.
The ripe seeds of the okra or okro can be roasted and nibbled or used as a coffee substitute.
Of all the yellow cherry varieties, this one is probably the best known and most common throughout Germany.
The Baby Boo pumpkin is hardly bigger than an apple. The firm skin is white, the firm flesh rather cream-coloured to pale orange.