On Chef Seeto’s recent visit to the islands of Rabi and Kioa to film Taste of Paradise, he discovered its inhabitants don’t need to waste money on beer and booze from the mainland, they just need to climb their closest coconut tree.
Monkey Puzzle Tree
A weird conifer tree that is native to Chile and Argentina has its origins dating back 180 million years.
The trees, which can live over one thousand years, produce seeds about the size of an almond that the ancient people boil and ferment to make the sour but milky mudai. The Chilean government designated the tree a national symbol, making this perhaps the world’s only alcoholic beverage to be brewed from a national monument.
Cashew Apples
The cashew apple is not a true fruit, but the swollen stalk to which the cashew nut is attached. Cashew apples are vitamin-C rich and eaten fresh or juiced in growing areas. Because the cashew tree is a close relative of poison ivy and poison oak, every part of the tree causes a rash-except the fruit, called the cashew apple, and the nut that hangs below it.
It is native to Brazil but widely grown in the Indian state of Goa, where cashew apples are crushed, fermented, and distilled to make a high-proof spirit called feni. When you find yourself in Goa, you will more likely than not find yourself drinking feni (sometimes spelled fenny). The strong-smelling liquor is a trademark of the region. Those with a low alcohol tolerance, however, might want to stick with something simpler; like cashew nuts.
Beer Bananas
Ugandan farmers grow East African Highland bananas to make a national drink known as banana beer. To accelerate the ripening of bananas, a hole is dug in the ground or a wooden vessel is used, lined with dried banana leaves which are then set on fire.
Fresh banana leaves are laid on top of them, and then the unripe bananas. These are then covered by more fresh banana leaves. After four to six days, the bananas are ripe. The juice is put through a grass filter and allowed to ferment for two days before it’s ready to drink.
Sorghum Wheat
Throughout Africa, sorghum has fed people during times of famine and offered them a beer at the end of the day. This grain, which is also used to make the unleavened Ethiopian bread injera, can be threshed, soaked, and brewed at home. China’s national spirit mao tai is also made from sorghum.
Mao tai has its home of production in the town that shares its same name, Mao tai, in the city of Renhuia in the Ginzhou Province of Southwest China. This spirit has a very pervading and distinctive, gentle aroma of soy sauce, being sometimes called “sauce-fragranced”. It is also China’s national spirit and holds the prestigious honour of being the only gift that Chinese embassies will bestow in foreign countries, and is exclusively poured during feasts attended by foreign heads of state and visiting distinguished guest of China.
Spruce Tree
Captain Cook relied upon a beer recipe given to him by botanist Joseph Banks to cure his crew of scurvy. It called for boiling spruce twigs in water with tea, then mixing with molasses and beer or yeast to start the fermentation process. High in ascorbic acid, spruce trees kept the crew healthy when there was no fruit to be had.
Coconut Palm Wine
Wherever there are plenty of coconut palm trees, there’s sure to be someone guzzling down their syrupy contents. From West Africa to the islands of the Pacific and Fiji, people have for centuries tapped the sap found in palm trees and let it ferment. The drink, called toddy, is perhaps the most time-honoured and universal natural moonshine around, and not just among humans!
It’s been found that the Malaysian pen-tailed shrew; a tiny, long-nosed, mousey creature, subsists almost entirely on the fermented nectar of flower buds from palm trees. It’s virtually drunk all day! On my visit to Kioa Island, the locals showed me the many trees with plastic bottles attached to the flowering branches collecting the sweet sap. I learned that heating the sap gently turns it into a delicious and quenching tea. And if you keep heating it, the tea reduces down into a magical, thick golden coconut honey that the Tuvaluans on Kioa spread on toast.
Traditional Fijian cuisine rarely uses alcohol in the cooking, which is kind of strange because of the abundance of coconut trees to make toddy. It’s not so much the alcohol that adds value to a dish, but the residual sugars and flavours that are left behind once the alcohol has evaporated that is most treasured.
After the Kioa episode airs on TV later in the year, I can imagine seeing coconut trees all across Fiji with plastic bottles hanging off the branches. The Tree of Life is a truly wonderful gift of virgin oil to heal and repair; coconut milk and water for sweetness and juice; coconut sap for honey and tea; and if you can hide it from the men in the house — natural, coconut toddy wine to add to your kitchen ingredients.
* Lance Seeto is the multi-award winning executive chef based on Mana Island, and is Fiji Airway’s Culinary Ambassador and host of Fiji TV’s Taste of Paradise. Season 4 is now filming and begins August 30 on Fiji One.
