A pictorial guide to Chinese cooking ingredients

[liuzhou]

Today I’m getting volcanic and beating about the bush.

 

火山豆 (huǒ shān dòu) literally means ‘volcano bean’ and is one name for a culinary nut, better known as 夏威夷果 (xià wēi yí guǒ), literally meaning Hawaii being a phonetic rendition and really meaning very little in a literal sense. This nut doesn’t originate in Hawaii, though. It is one of two species native to Queensland, Australia - Macadamia integrifolia or Macadamia tetraphylla. There are two other species of Macadamia but they are inedible as they contain cyanogenic glycosides which you don’t want to contain.

 

They are named after chemist, medical teacher, and politician John Macadam, who was the honorary Secretary of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria beginning in 1857.

 

The nuts were eaten in the bush by Australian aboriginals but only produced en masse commercially in the 1920s after seeds of the trees had been introduced to Hawaii in the 1880s. Today the largest producer is South Africa.

 

The trees do not produce nuts until around seven years old and the nuts have to gathered by hand making them relatively expensive. Although, once they do produce nuts they go on doing so for up to 100 years.

 

The are used mainly as snack nuts or in cakes and desserts. Macadamia oil is also available. It has a high smoke point, but is expensive. Their shells are extremely hard to crack; those sold here come with a key to facilitate entry.

 

 

Note: Macadamias are toxic to dogs and cats.