Curry 101

No, this isn't a post about all the great food and restaurants we have enjoyed during our month in Thailand. Instead, I wanted to tell you about a remarkable little man and his remarkable little plot of land which we stumbled upon a few kilometers down a small road near our guest house.

This is Piet Ruijters, a retired pharmacist from the Netherlands. For the last 8 years he has lived in southern Thailand, elevating his interest in fruits, spices and plants from a simple hobby to a passion to be shared with visitors to his "Spicy Garden".

We happened upon this place quite accidentally - the day before I had spotted a sign at the side of the road but didn't bother stopping as we were a hungry bunch on our way to find lunch. So today we went back to check it out. There is a small website which states "the garden is for people interested in plants". Well kids - today we are interested in plants!

Entrance is free and no seeds or plants are available for sale. So clearly it's not a revenue generator. Scattered throughout Piet's garden were hundreds of various plants, representing a number of common household spices and other foods which are found in kitchens and pantries throughout the world, but which many of us have no clue of their source: pepper, coffee, cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, cloves and many others.

The only problem was that we weren't taking notes and sadly a fair amount of the knowledge Piet imparted on us failed to get absorbed, such as the name of the tree above. However, we do know that the thorns are also used by Thais to pierce their ears. Ouch! Annie much preferred the piercing gun at Claire's in the mall.

In addition to spices, Piet had a wide variety of fruit trees - jackfruit, papayas, bananas, pineapples. Shirley found one of her favourites - papaya, and it was a little bit embarrassing to admit that we really had no visual image of what happens in the life of a typical papaya before it makes it to our own supermarkets - today was a great lesson for all of us.

Here I was treated to the basic components of curry. I'm proud to say that I already knew that curry really only refers to a mixture, rather than one individual spice, but did you know that the two key traditional ingredients are turmeric (curcuma longa) and the leaves from a curry tree (murraya koeningii)? Liars. None of you knew that. I'll take little-known spice facts for $800 please, Alex.

And here is pepper plant - we learned that the different kinds of peppercorns (common black, green and red) are all actually from the same berries, but the colours and characteristics depend on the handling of the ripe and unripe fruits from the pepper vine.

Annie and Owen were stumped when Piet asked if they knew what this tree was used for - they had no idea until he carved a small portion of bark from the trunk and asked them to smell it. And while it was quite familiar to them, neither could come up with the answer. I think it still took them some time to believe that they were smelling cinnamon.

And while henna ink is increasingly popular for tattoos, and even for some men to cover up grey in their hair (I mean c'mon, who would do that!?), did you know that it comes from a simple green leaf? Piet promised us that if Shirley kept this leaf on her hand for a few hours, it would leave a blackened mark. No patience to test that theory. 

A monitor lizard decided to join us for the lecture, only to disappear very quickly when he found out it was a vegetarian-themed farm.

Another of Shirley's favourite fruit is the 'wax apple', a big seller in Taiwan. She had never seen one growing on a tree before, and again reinforced just how little we know about the source of much of what we purchase and consume.

Piet with a flowering pineapple

In preparing for this six month adventure, there was no plan to visit Piet and his Spicy Garden, but I'm glad we discovered him and his project. For Shirley and I it was really interesting to see, smell and taste some of the common (as well as more exotic) ingredients which we use in our cooking, and for the kids it was like spending the morning in an outdoor classroom.

One final food for thought (pun entirely intended) - chili peppers, like the one above, were introduced to Asia in the 16th century by Spanish and Portuguese traders. Cooking southeast Asian food without these spicy fruits is nearly impossible - I wonder what Thai food would be like without it?