I never really understood the story of Jack in the Beanstalk… who would trade a cow, even a sickly one for beans? There was nothing magical about the beans I grew up with; black or brown types were from cans and green beans were often frozen.
At the organic market last Saturday I came across an old woman selling large green pods, luckily she didn’t want to trade them for a sickly cow… 10 pesos would do.
I asked her what they were called and she said ‘Cuil.’ She explained that if I opened them up there were two delicacies inside. One was the cotton like pith that surrounded the individual seeds. It was juicy and sweet and I am sure would make a great agua fresca or sorbet. The second delicacy were the seeds themselves. I took the pods back to Cafe Juanita to ask the women I work with if they knew about them. They had eaten the pith but not the seeds. We opened the pods, removed and cleaned the seeds and then boiled them for a few minutes until they began to soften. I drained them and then fried them in garlic oil until they started to brown. I served them with crumbled queso fresco and a drizzle of our house-made sesame chili oil. The texture was a cross between butter and a chick pea and very flavorful. A true delicacy and worthy of a cow trade!
I looked online to see if I could find some more information about these pods but when I googled ‘cuil’ nothing came up. I finally found a reference in Elsevier’s Dictionary of Trees relating the ‘cuil’ to the dogwood. Here is a photo of the dogwood pods and while there is a similarity I am not entirely convinced. I may need to go visit San Pedro Cafetitlan to see the tree for myself. Looking forward to serving this up at our ‘Village to Table’ dinners that we will be starting in October at our Chiles&Chocolate Cooking School.
For information about our cooking classes: http://www.huatulco-catering.com or chiles.chocolate@yahoo.com
Jane Bauer 