Wonders never cease

Over the past 18 months I’ve had a hankering to get my hands on some black nuts but they have eluded me until recently.

Black nut – also known as keluak – is used in Indonesian and Malaysian cooking.  I’d never heard of them until I read Debbie Teoh’s fantastic repository of Peranakan recipes, Nonya Cuisine.  

Debbie’s book is choc-full of really interesting and highly authentic recipes and I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve cooked so far.  Her black nut chicken curry recipe caught my eye because it contained this novel ingredient and I was intrigued by her description of its chocolate/mushroom flavour.

My interest was further piqued when I discovered that they are highly poisonous in their natural state and have to undergo a treatment process over 40 days before they are edible. God only knows why I’m attracted to such weird food.  I’ve searched my psyche and conclude that it must be some kind of rebellion against growing up in Palmerston North during the 1960s and ‘70s, where chicken chop suey at one of the city’s two Chinese restaurants was about as exotic as it got.

The convoluted process of making black nut safe to eat
reminds me of the lengths pre-European Maori
went to in order to eliminate deadly toxins
from karaka berries.  Just think how desperate for
protein they must have been to have persisted with
a food that could killed them in a most grotesque
and painful manner if they got the preparation wrong.
 Click here for the fascinatingly gruesome details.

So, the hunt was on for some black nuts!

Auckland has some impressive Asian food emporiums, where you can get everything from very dodgy looking pickled things that even I’m too scared to try – through to all manner of exotic vegetables.  Although it’s possible to find a wide range of weird and wonderful fresh and frozen South East Asian ingredients, it transpired that black nuts were not among them.  In desperation I contacted www.malaysiakitchen.co.nz but they didn’t know where I could get any either.

So I’d resigned myself to being none the wiser about this mysterious ingredient for the foreseeable future.  

But fate was on my side.  One of my local Asian grocery stores isn’t big, and it doesn’t stock fruit and veges, but it’s clean, has friendly staff and has all of the basics.

Besides a wide range of Chinese goods, I often find unusual Malaysian, Indonesian and Japanese ingredients there too, so I usually browse around to check out what’s in stock on the off-chance of finding something new and different.  The strategy paid off because a couple of weeks ago I spotted – tah dah! – vacuum packed black nut meat thanks, apparently, to demand from the store’s Indonesian customers.

Fortunately the nuts had been pre-prepared, so it wasn’t necessary to start dinner preparations 40 days in advance and I didn’t have to worry about inadvertently killing off my family if I got it wrong.








So, without further ado, I got cooking and here’s the somewhat unappealing looking result:

I’m pleased to report that, in this case, its evil appearance was deceiving.  The curry was delicious and did indeed have chocolaty and mushroomy notes as promised by Debbie Teoh.  To my amazement everyone in my family – even plain foodies Don and Rory – said they liked it and would happily eat it again.  

Wonders never cease!

Where to buy black nut:

The Tofu Shop
955 New North Road
Mt Albert