cashew -- gesundheit

You have had fair warning.

Whenever a writer resorts to hoary vaudeville jokes as a hook, you know something is afoot. Or, in this case, atree.

I stopped by Rooster's yesterday to ask the manager, Julio, about his experiences with his Telcel modem. I was a bit unclear about the billing process now that I am online with both Telcel and Telmex. (And you will hear a bit more about that later this week.)

Having finished my electronic mission, Gary, the owner of the restaurant, asked me if I could identify the fruit on top of the table. If I had not seen one a couple of years ago, I probably would have been stumped.

It is the fruit of the cashew tree. What we call cashew nuts is that tiny portion on top of the much-larger fruit. It looks like a stem. The fruit is called a cashew apple.

Most seeds are surrounded by the meat of their fruit. Peaches. Apples. Grapes. Not the cashew. The future generation sits on top like the stem of a jack-o-lantern.

Any time Gary introduces me to a new fruit from his orchard, the conversation quickly wends through a trivia labyrinth. Gary said that none of his staff (including the cooks) had ever seen the fruit.

Being a fellow who is both full of himself and dodgy information, I told Gary I thought the cashew originated in India. Or, at least that is what the Spanish thought. They call it "Nueces de la India." Indian nuts. That made some sense based on our brief survey of non-recognition.

I was dead wrong. Unlike the coconuts, mangoes, and limes that surround us, cashews were not brought to the New World from India. In fact, it was the other way round.

Cashews are local boys. Not Mexican local boys. But they were solely located in the Americas when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two. The Carribean basin to be exact. The islands, northern South America, and Central America.

When the Portuguese discovered it, they saw that it had potential. First the nuts, then the cashew apple. Within years, they had spread the trees to their Asian and African colonies. Just as they distributed the chili throughout the world in the same time period.

Everyone knows why we call one of America's native birds the turkey. When the Spanish and Portuguese imported the birds to Europe, the English decided to name them for the country where they thought they originated -- Turkey.

It could have been worse. They could have thought the birds came from Greece. Hearing your host ask "Would you like a slice of Greece?" would deflate the holiday table spirit.

This morning I asked Dora if she knew what the fruit was. She guessed that it was a chili, as did the cooks at Rooster's. That is understandable. The nut does look like a stem.

But, the fruit is not new to everyone in Mexico. One of the propane guys who filled my tank yesterday saw the one Gary gave me sitting on my counter in the patio. He called it a marañón, the Spanish name for the cashew apple. I should have asked him f he was from southern Mexico where the cultures of Central America and Mexico mix.

The cashew is still very popular in Central America. At least, the cashew apple is. Most of the nuts are exported as a very profitable commodity.

But there is no international market for the fresh fruit. Probably for two reasons. The first is that it has a very short shelf-life. The apple Gary harvested yesterday has already started going bad.

The second is that it is far too sweet for most people to consume as a fruit. It has that same overwhelming syrupy taste that keeps me from enjoying guanábanas. But, just like guanábanas, the cashew apple is used commercially as a sweetener and as an ingredient in agua fresca.

And then there are the Portuguese. During their rule of Goa, they had a lasting impact on the food of that part of India. The use of vinegar is an example. And, of course, the importation of chilies.

The Portuguese put the cashew apple to a different (but obvious) use. They fermented the apple and then double-distilled it to create an 85 proof concoction known as feni. There is also a palm version that sounds similar to our local tuba -- at least prior to distillation.

Feni is quite popular in Goa and southern India. The Portuguese do not get enough credit for what they did to promote global trade.

So, that is my cashew story. The next time you pop one of those slightly-sweet nut morsels in your mouth, you will know a bit of the long path it took to your stomach to add to your Gemütlichkeit.

Auf Wiedersehen.