Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome savor protection of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: I'm any Reason and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
Speaker 2: have an episode for you about the curry tree.
Speaker 1: Yes, my ohm, I was there any particular reason this
Speaker 1: was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 3: Was there? Oh? Heck, I don't know. I don't think.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting because I actually hadn't really heard about this.
Speaker 1: I can't say I haven't had it, but I haven't
Speaker 1: the curry leaf anyway, but I haven't knowingly had it.
Speaker 2: I've definitely had it in spice blends, and I strongly
Speaker 2: believe that I've consumed it in food that other the
Speaker 2: restaurants have cooked for me. So but yeah, no, I've
Speaker 2: certainly not had it fresh, and I don't have any
Speaker 2: in my house. And now this is one of those
Speaker 2: episodes where I am craving so many things that I
Speaker 2: have never consumed, and I really need to get my
Speaker 2: hands on some.
Speaker 1: Yes, it sounds so bright and delightful. It sounds like
Speaker 1: something I would really love. So I'm sad that I
Speaker 1: can't find it anywhere. But no, I haven't given up hope.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, Well I guess that brings us to our question, sure,
Speaker 1: the curry tree, what is it?
Speaker 2: Well, the curry tree is a tree that grows aromatic
Speaker 2: leaves that can be used as an herb to flavor
Speaker 2: all kinds of usually savory dishes. The leaves are these
Speaker 2: like small pointed ovals, dark green in color, with the
Speaker 2: citrus herbal, bitter, earthy, nutty sort of flavor. When they're
Speaker 2: young and tender, they can be chopped and eaten fresh
Speaker 2: and salads and dips, or cooked into soups, stews, fries,
Speaker 2: rice pilluffs, breads, and sauces. When they're older and tougher,
Speaker 2: they can be cooked with a dish and then taken
Speaker 2: out for serving, and can also be dried and powdered
Speaker 2: and used however you like. Dried curry leaves do sometimes
Speaker 2: go into spice blends such as massalas. In English. We
Speaker 2: often call those curry powders, but they contain more than
Speaker 2: just curry leaves, and commonly don't contain curry leaves at all.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: It's a kind of flavor combination from what I understand,
Speaker 2: that you almost don't believe exists in a single plant,
Speaker 2: because it's so zesty and earthy at the same time.
Speaker 2: Like if you could take the iridescence of a butterfly's
Speaker 2: wings or a crow's feathers and make it a flavor.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds so lovely.
Speaker 3: Really need to track some fresh ones down.
Speaker 2: I'm like this close to like to like trying to
Speaker 2: imp or a curry tree plant and seeing if I
Speaker 2: can get it to grow indoors.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure about the legality in my area here.
Speaker 2: We are okay, only import plants legally, friends, It's important
Speaker 2: for your ecosystem anyway. The curry tree is a member
Speaker 2: of the rue family, a cousin to citrus. It's a
Speaker 2: tropical to subtropical big shrub or small tree, depending on
Speaker 2: your personal definition. It can grow to about twenty feet
Speaker 2: that's six meters in height, with a slender trunk and
Speaker 2: a leafy crown. Different varieties have been developed with slightly
Speaker 2: different leaf sizes and flavors. They are evergreen and tropical climates,
Speaker 2: but will drop their leaves over the winter in cooler climates.
Speaker 2: The curry tree is not to be confused with the
Speaker 2: curry leaf plant, which is an herb that looks a
Speaker 2: little bit like like silvery rosemary and apparently smells strongly
Speaker 2: of like bitter sagey maybe curry leaves, but more like
Speaker 2: bitter sage and it is not often used in cooking,
Speaker 2: but okay, curry trees. They bloom with these fragrant white
Speaker 2: flowers and will produce small berries that ripe into a
Speaker 2: deep purple black in color and do taste sweet. But
Speaker 2: they don't really produce enough fruit for humans to bother with.
Speaker 2: I do understand that they're sometimes eaten fresh locally, and
Speaker 2: if you do get a hold of some, note that
Speaker 2: you should not eat the seeds. They can cause a
Speaker 2: toxic reaction. The trees can be grown from those seeds,
Speaker 2: but the roots will also put off a little suckers
Speaker 2: that will grow into saplings. Those leaves can be sold
Speaker 2: fresh or frozen, or dried or processed into powder. The
Speaker 2: fragrant oils can also be extracted and used as flavoring
Speaker 2: or in the personal care industry and cosmetic soap stuff
Speaker 2: like that. I understand that when they're fresh, they yeah
Speaker 2: have this like pungent peppery lemon grass bergamot annis like
Speaker 2: mintea resiny nutty flavor. When they're dried, it sort of
Speaker 2: flattens out to like an earthy, bright herbal kind of combination,
Speaker 2: and when using the fresh leaves, cooks will usually remove
Speaker 2: the stems and then saute the leaves and some kind
Speaker 2: of fat like oil or ghee which is clarified butter,
Speaker 2: in order to release all of those flavor oils, and
Speaker 2: then use both the leaves and the fat in whatever way.
Speaker 2: Fats that have been flavored with herbs and spices like
Speaker 2: this is the base of a lot of savory recipes
Speaker 2: from South India and surrounding cuisines, and sometimes those crispy
Speaker 2: fried leaves are used to garnish dishes sort of like
Speaker 2: a fried sage leaves sounds so good?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
Speaker 2: The leaves can also be used in teas and other
Speaker 2: drinks like a sippable yogurt kind of situations, and in
Speaker 2: the United States you can often find them fresh at
Speaker 2: grocers that cater to South Indian and more broadly, I
Speaker 2: guess South Asian populations like Patel Brothers. If you've got
Speaker 2: one of those in your town, We've got a.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to go on an adventure, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: I'm into it.
Speaker 2: Yes, more food adventures always always Well, what about the
Speaker 2: nutrition you're not typically eating enough to make a real
Speaker 2: caloric difference, But curry leaves do contain lots of minerals
Speaker 2: and vitamins other micronutrients. You get more from fresh than
Speaker 2: from dried. That being said, the leaves and all other
Speaker 2: parts of the tree have been used in traditional areavatic
Speaker 2: medicine for a long time for a number of purposes,
Speaker 2: and research has found compounds that have shown potential in
Speaker 2: animal studies and in vitro in the lab to protect
Speaker 2: cardiovascular function and brain function and to have like anti
Speaker 2: inflammatory and pain relief properties. But that's all been with extracts,
Speaker 2: and again in animals and in vitro, not in humans.
Speaker 2: So you know, savor motto. More research is necessary because
Speaker 2: bodies are implicated and nutrition is complicated, and before you
Speaker 2: consume medicinal amounts of anything, you should check with a
Speaker 2: medical care provider who is not us, because we're not that.
Speaker 2: That's not what we are, that's not what we're about,
Speaker 2: that's not what we have the training to be. No, no, nope,
Speaker 2: Well we've got a number for you. Kind of This
Speaker 2: is one of the ones where I couldn't figure out
Speaker 2: if I was using the wrong keywords in the wrong language,
Speaker 2: or if Google was returning things to me as like
Speaker 2: an American English speaker in an annoying way, or if
Speaker 2: it's just the kind of thing that, like crop numbers
Speaker 2: aren't really reported on that widely because it's more a homegrown,
Speaker 2: community grown kind of spice.
Speaker 3: Or orbb et, cetera.
Speaker 2: But I can tell you that in environments where curry
Speaker 2: trees are evergreen, you can harvest from the trees once
Speaker 2: every three months, up to every three months in trees
Speaker 2: that are older than five years of age.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, listeners, please write in if you have any
Speaker 1: more information, because a lot of the things I read
Speaker 1: were very personal stories of trying to get a curry
Speaker 1: tree or transported curry tree, or find where they could
Speaker 1: purchase it, people could purchase it. So listeners, please let
Speaker 1: us know. Oh yeah, but we do have a history
Speaker 1: of sorts for you.
Speaker 2: We do, and we're going to get into that as
Speaker 2: soon as we get back from a quick break for
Speaker 2: word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, so yes.
Speaker 1: Going back to Lauren's point, the reason I said a
Speaker 1: history of sorts is because unfortunately a lot of times
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that is maybe not as popular
Speaker 1: in the United States or in the Western world, that
Speaker 1: the history or the research is not as easily found.
Speaker 1: And I tried a bunch of different terms because this
Speaker 1: tree does go by a bunch of different terms. So
Speaker 1: once again, listeners, if you have any information, please let
Speaker 1: us know. We would love to look into it further
Speaker 1: and shout it out. Oh yeah, But that being said,
Speaker 1: historians believe the curry tree is indigenous to modern day India,
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. As early as the first century CE.
Speaker 1: Records indicate that people that lived where the tree was
Speaker 1: grown were using the leaves to flavor their food, though
Speaker 1: some suggest it was being used as early as sixth
Speaker 1: century BCE. They were also being used medicinally for all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Pretty early on. It was quite a
Speaker 1: long list. Immigration and trade introduced curry leaves to places
Speaker 1: like South Africa and Malaysia. Over time, the leaves were
Speaker 1: integrated into all kinds of dishes in India, particularly in
Speaker 1: South and West India and other areas that it grew
Speaker 1: or was available, as well as things like cosmetics and
Speaker 1: hygiene products like soap. In the eighteenth century, the British,
Speaker 1: who had a colonial presence in India allegedly invented curry
Speaker 1: powder to mimic Indian flavors outside of India, And yeah,
Speaker 1: these powders sometimes included ground up curry leaves, but not always,
Speaker 1: and even when they did, the flavor was largely lost.
Speaker 1: From what I've read. For a good long while, the
Speaker 1: curry tree and its leaves remained fairly local to the
Speaker 1: places it had historically been grown, with a few pockets
Speaker 1: of Indian immigrants in other countries. And as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: there are lobtails of the difficulties of transporting the tree
Speaker 1: to a new home, the anxiety of losing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this important colony, this important part of your
Speaker 2: culinary tradition. Yeah, and they are a little bit tricky
Speaker 2: to grow from seed. Cuttings are easier to get going,
Speaker 2: but they're also more difficult to transport.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I actually really recommend reading them because it's
Speaker 1: something we've talked about before. But when you have a
Speaker 1: plant that you just are like, please don't die, but
Speaker 1: need you, yeah, do everything you can, it just means
Speaker 1: a lot to you, of.
Speaker 2: Course, I mean, you know, aside from it being a
Speaker 2: living thing and just wanting to care for something and
Speaker 2: not you know, let it down, right, but.
Speaker 1: Especially for something like this where you might not be
Speaker 1: able to get these curry leaves so easily. So if
Speaker 1: you're curry tree dies, yeah, yeah, it's an important part
Speaker 1: of your food way, sure, exactly. That being said, with
Speaker 1: the growing interest in trying new things in places the
Speaker 1: US to Indian food in general, and increased exposure to
Speaker 1: the ingredient through medium, more and more people who have
Speaker 1: never tried it before previously are seeking it out. Other
Speaker 1: cuisines have started incorporating these leaves into dishes as well,
Speaker 1: so it's one of those things that's getting a lot
Speaker 1: more recognition. But I would still say, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of it, so a long way to go,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't recall ever seeing it in a grocery store,
Speaker 2: but to be fair, I haven't been looking for it,
Speaker 2: so there you go. One issue here has been that
Speaker 2: curry trees are carriers of a couple pests and diseases
Speaker 2: that can affect other tropical crop trees like their citrus cousins.
Speaker 2: Citrus greening disease is the big one. It's a bacterial
Speaker 2: infection that's spread by insects. It can ruin a citrus
Speaker 2: crop and there's no cure for it, like you just
Speaker 2: have to prevent the bugs from spreading it or kind
Speaker 2: of like burn everything down. So in the United States,
Speaker 2: for example, there have been some regulations put in place
Speaker 2: about growing and shipping curry leaf trees in and among
Speaker 2: states that do have significant citrus crops, like like California
Speaker 2: and Florida, which are also basically where curry trees would
Speaker 2: grow best. But yeah, like there's this obvious and only
Speaker 2: increasing interest in curry leaves, so certainly since the turn
Speaker 2: of the twenty first century that there's been a bunch
Speaker 2: of research into how to integrate curry trees into the agriculture. Here,
Speaker 2: I read that there are somewhat popular crop in parts
Speaker 2: of Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Once again, listeners, let us know. But also in more
Speaker 1: recent times there have been concerns around over harvesting, sustainability,
Speaker 1: and climate change. In response to that those things, there
Speaker 1: are efforts to educate and research ways to preserve and
Speaker 1: sustain the curry tree, which of course is very important
Speaker 1: if we're talking about more people using it cuisine or
Speaker 1: it's spreading around. So yeah, yep, and that's unfortunately what
Speaker 1: I could find. It's a shorter history section. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I hope that. I hope there's more written
Speaker 1: about it, and maybe I just couldn't find it, yeah
Speaker 1: in English, or maybe people are just so used to
Speaker 1: it where it is that they I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: ubiquitous or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did read a few references to the leaves
Speaker 2: being used in different cultural practices, ceremonies, things like that,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't really follow I couldn't follow up on
Speaker 2: any of those leads with anything that seemed concrete, so
Speaker 2: I didn't want to include it.
Speaker 3: But yes, absolutely, if.
Speaker 2: You have any personal history with Curly, we would love
Speaker 2: to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. In the meantime, that is what we have
Speaker 1: to say about Curry Tree and Curry Leaves for now.
Speaker 2: We do already have some listener mail for you, though,
Speaker 2: and we're going to get into that as soon as
Speaker 2: we get back from one more quick break for a
Speaker 2: word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and
Speaker 1: we're back with listener.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like a bright I don't know why, I just
Speaker 1: have in my head that it's like a bright flavor.
Speaker 1: But hopefully one day I can try it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, kind of citrusy, so there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay. I'm so excited to share this because it
Speaker 1: was It features in an episode we had done a
Speaker 1: while back that I'd kind of put out of my mind,
Speaker 1: and now I'm angry at myself that I had because
Speaker 1: it was joyous. So Judy wrote, first of all, thank
Speaker 1: you for this Easter's podcast about Torda pascadina. It sounds
Speaker 1: like the perfect Easter main dish for my vegetarian grandson,
Speaker 1: and I have saved some recipes to try it for
Speaker 1: next year. I'm behind on my podcast, so I heard
Speaker 1: this too late for this year. A year or two ago,
Speaker 1: your Easter podcast was about lamb cake. I wrote you
Speaker 1: about my family tradition of making a lamb cake out
Speaker 1: of red velvet cake so it looks like roadkill inside,
Speaker 1: and decapitating it for my son, whose birthday is always
Speaker 1: near Easter, and giving him the head to eat. You
Speaker 1: even read my letter in the show. This year, my
Speaker 1: daughter once again made the cake using her grandmother's original pans,
Speaker 1: which we figure are over seventy years old. As usual,
Speaker 1: my son got the head and his children argued over
Speaker 1: which of them would get the backside which had the
Speaker 1: most frosting. I am attaching three pictures for your amusement.
Speaker 1: One is the cake before we cut it. My youngest
Speaker 1: grandchild thought it was a puppy. The second is the
Speaker 1: cake after the head and all the nether regions had
Speaker 1: been served. The last is my son's new way to
Speaker 1: eat the head. He scooped out the brains. As you
Speaker 1: can see, the humor over here is a bit twisted,
Speaker 1: but we do have a good time, all right. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple things. Number one listeners, if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: this episode, you must be one. You must have several questions.
Speaker 2: If you did not grow up with the tradition of
Speaker 2: making a lamb shaped cake around Easter.
Speaker 1: That's a thing that occurs, and it's wondrous, and you
Speaker 1: need to look up pictures immediately.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. Yes, that they range in appearance from.
Speaker 2: Glorious to real goofy to terrifying to quite terrifying. Yes,
Speaker 2: this one, I would say, is on the goofy, on
Speaker 2: the goofy side, little little white white lamb, a little
Speaker 2: bit googly in the eyes, little heart shaped nose. It
Speaker 2: doesn't not resemble a puppy.
Speaker 1: I can see the puppy I can see. Don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would have put that together
Speaker 1: without you mentioning it, but right, I see the puppy.
Speaker 1: There's also, yes, an image of the scooped out brains.
Speaker 2: That's the right, the decapitated cake head on a plate
Speaker 2: with the brains having been the brains having been scooped out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the and the rompe removed. I do appreciate
Speaker 1: that people were fighting over it because it had the
Speaker 1: most rousting that. You know, you've got to have your priority, you.
Speaker 3: Do, you do.
Speaker 2: And I appreciate how much each slice must look like
Speaker 2: a steak when you played it, because of the white
Speaker 2: icing relatively resembling a fat cap and the red of
Speaker 2: the cake.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely, it's excellent, it's beautiful, it's fantastic. And this
Speaker 1: is certainly a humor that Lauren and I can get
Speaker 1: on board with.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, if you couldn't tell.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So thank you, yes, thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2: Let us know next year if you work out a
Speaker 2: torta pascalina recipe. Ye, oh god, I really need to
Speaker 2: really need to make one of those. How I'm hungry today. Okay,
Speaker 2: here we are EJ wrote, I thought I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: writing to you for a while, but then you suddenly
Speaker 2: hit us with a chata episode. As with most of
Speaker 2: my email, I'll start with a short anecdote about your
Speaker 2: latest episode before it inevitably veers into another food story.
Speaker 2: That pattern isn't going anywhere. About ten years ago, some
Speaker 2: friends invited me to go shatake picking in the mountains
Speaker 2: of the rural Japanese town we lived in at the time.
Speaker 2: I love shatake, though back then I was more familiar
Speaker 2: with the dried kind with its rich umami that works
Speaker 2: well in Chinese dishes, but I mostly used it as
Speaker 2: the main protein in a cream based pasta I flavored
Speaker 2: with star Annis. It took us almost an hour to
Speaker 2: find the meeting spot. When we finally arrived, we met
Speaker 2: the other participants, mother and daughter, and our guide, a sweet,
Speaker 2: elderly gentleman. At the time, our Japanese was pretty limited
Speaker 2: and the guide's gruff rural dialect didn't help. Still, we
Speaker 2: got by with what we knew and a bit of
Speaker 2: nonverbal communication. He led us to the mushrooms, which were
Speaker 2: growing in a forested area behind some houses on the
Speaker 2: mountain side until then I'd always imagine shitake to be
Speaker 2: about two inches across, but we weren't prepared for the
Speaker 2: size of these things. To this day, I'm not one
Speaker 2: hundred percent sure they were all chatake. The smaller ones,
Speaker 2: which were still pretty big, definitely were I guess the
Speaker 2: rest had just been left to grow wild. The guide
Speaker 2: also pointed out some seasonal fruits, and soon we were
Speaker 2: picking per simmons and figs too. They cooked some of
Speaker 2: the mushrooms and fruits we picked and had ourselves a
Speaker 2: little picnic. They also offered wild boarn meat, which was delicious.
Speaker 2: One of my friends, a vegetarian at well pescatarian in
Speaker 2: Japan since dashi is hard to avoid, even had a bite.
Speaker 2: She said, I've never had wild boar before, and I
Speaker 2: don't know if we'll ever get another chance. Then the
Speaker 2: guide excitedly told us that one of his friends had
Speaker 2: just caught a bore and asked if we wanted to
Speaker 2: see it. We were taken to a shack behind a
Speaker 2: house where a majestic boar lay on its back halfway
Speaker 2: through being skinned. We didn't know quite what was going
Speaker 2: on until they handed each of us a knife. So
Speaker 2: there we were, including my vegetarian friend, unsure what to do,
Speaker 2: but helping butcher a wild boar, we just did our
Speaker 2: best hakuna matata. I guess they offered us some meat
Speaker 2: to take home. My friends weren't sure what to do
Speaker 2: with it, so I ended up with about two kilos
Speaker 2: of wild boar for free. I don't really remember what
Speaker 2: I did with the chitake. I think I made a
Speaker 2: lot of omelets that week. The boar meat eventually became
Speaker 2: a smoky chocolate chili concarne, which was a big hit
Speaker 2: at our next movie night. PS here's the vegetarian in
Speaker 2: her natural habitat. She shared her thoughts on the whole experience.
Speaker 2: This wild boar had lived freely and just happened to
Speaker 2: be caught, which felt consistent with the natural order of things.
Speaker 2: She said she wished all food could be sourced as
Speaker 2: ethically as this, and attached photos are of a mushroom
Speaker 2: cap that is the size of this lady's head. It
Speaker 2: is quite a large mushroom cap. And then a basket
Speaker 2: of all those look lovely. Oh my goodness, just really
Speaker 2: just really like if a hob bit new where those
Speaker 2: were growing, you would have to watch your watch, your
Speaker 2: stash because they would absolutely be on that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I also have to say shout out for
Speaker 1: using hakuna matata. Yeah, talk to you about butchering a
Speaker 1: wild boar. I'm sure Pumba would appreciate. Yeah, appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But this sounds lovely. This whole experience sounds really lovely.
Speaker 1: And getting to getting this kind of surprise wild boar situation.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah right right, like not only not only mushroom foraging,
Speaker 2: but then you also get like like per simmons and
Speaker 2: figs and wild boar and a little picnic. Oh it
Speaker 2: all sounds and a free butchering class.
Speaker 1: Yes you know all these things. But also yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the things that you made with the omelets, the smoky
Speaker 1: chocolate chili concarne. That sounds delicious. But it is nice
Speaker 1: when you hopefully are participating in the food ways in a.
Speaker 4: Way like this. Yeah, that feels more responsible and more
Speaker 4: ethical perfor Yeah yeah, but it looks it looks delicious.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, oh so much. I'm so hungry.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank you through both of these listeners for
Speaker 1: writing in. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can. Our email is Hello at savorpod. Dot com.
Speaker 3: We're also on social media.
Speaker 2: You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at
Speaker 2: savor pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or where never you listen
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
Speaker 2: producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
Speaker 2: and we hope that let's work. Good things are coming
Speaker 2: your way