The taste of palm oil

[asakiyume]

Sesame oil, peanut oil, olive oil--they have really distinctive tastes. Sesame oil really tastes like sesame, and peanut oil has a peanut taste, and olive oil doesn't taste like pickled olives, or brined olives, but it tastes the rich and fragrant way it smells.

Palm oil has a really distinctive taste too. When I tasted Flo's Nigerian fried beans, cooked in plenty of palm oil, it was the first time in a long time that I tasted something so completely *new* and *different*.


Nigerian fried beans from All Nigerian Recipes

Palm oil has, to me, a green taste ( which is funny since it's bright red), green and deeply warm. It tastes the way leaves baking under the midday sun smell--and mix that smell with the smell of hot, warm earth--that dusty warm smell. That's how it tastes to me. And it has a lingering feel in the mouth, the way peanut butter does--but not quite that sticky.


Do I like it? At first it nonplussed me a little because the flavor was so unlike other oil flavors I've experienced, but I enjoyed it. And today, going back for leftovers, I felt less tentative, more enthusiastic. Tastes: BROADENED.

Here is an oil palm plantation (photo from Azran Jaffar's article on a prizewinning smallholder's plantation)



Apparently there are two types of oil to be had from the oil palm. Red palm oil, the kind I used, comes from the fruit. A golden oil comes from the kernel.
Photo source here

Comments

[frigg.livejournal.com]

We produce rapeseed oil as well here in Denmark, it does make for beautiful fields, although I've yet to see one with a lot of poppies in it. :)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The fields that have the amazing bursts of colour are not being sprayed and are being grown organically.

When an organic field is allowed to lie fallow for a year, you get this:

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSCesRa6uiFuY_Kkf0fexuXiIW9uqi1K2Ke1QXD0bbY_7C62XsLRA

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I have a wild field and there is an organic farmer further down the road, but we rarely have such beautiful fields. I mostly get grasses, dandelions, and thistles with the occasional daisy (although I did have a single poppy one year) - probably because I'm just mowing it and not removing plant material. The farmer had a rather pretty field full of cow vetch and a few daisies last year. It attracted loads of butterflies. :)

Seems like I need to come to the UK for the really gorgeous fallow fields. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that is very pretty!