I’m almost going nuts. I’d go fully nuts but many of the ‘nuts’ we eat aren’t nuts at all in the botanical sense. Many are drupe seeds; some are gymnosperm seeds; others are angiosperm seeds. However they are considered nuts in a culinary sense. The most eaten 'nut' is actually a legume.
I’ll start with one culinary nut which may leap to some minds when thinking of Chinese cuisine. 腰果 (yāo guǒ), literally Kidney Nut, Anacardium occidentale, the Cashew Nut. Native to South America but cultivated mainly in Africa, they are grown in limited amounts in China, particularly in Sanya, Hainan Province. However, Vietnam is the largest exporter and much of what we get here are from there.
However, cashews are used far less in Chinese cuisine than most people think (and isn’t a botanical nut; it’s a drupe seed). Although cashews are certainly easily available, they are nearly all eaten as a snack; rarely in cooked dishes.
Googling for ‘nut Chinese food’ returns dozens of recipes for cashew chicken, a dish I’ve never seen and which is absent from my food delivery app covering almost all the thousands of restaurants in the city. Using Chinese search engines return a blank.
In fact. the delivery app only mentions two dishes containing cashews – 腰果虾仁 (yāo guǒ xiā rén), cashew shrimp and 西芹百合炒腰果 (xī qín bǎi hé chǎo yāo guǒ), cashew with celery. These I have seen here, but not often. There are only two restaurants serving the shrimp dish and a two others selling the celery and lily dish. Fuchsia Dunlop gives a recipe for Gong Bao (Kung Po in the west) Shrimp with Cashews in her ‘The Food of Sichuan’ (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), but as she notes, that is a recent, non-traditional innovation.
Cashew, celery and day lily
The Chicken cashew dish seems to be a Chinese-American take on the Thai ไก่ผัดเม็ดมะม่วงหิมพานต์ (kị̀ p̄hạd mĕd mam̀awn), stir fried chicken with cashew nuts.
