Published by Swiss James on 17 Dec 2008 at 12:39 pm
eVil fruIt
Is this the most evil looking fruit you have ever seen?
eVil
Apparently it grows underwater, is green and hard when young and turns hard and brown when it’s ripe. No idea about the English name for it.
The taste of the white Cocunutty flesh is somewhere between a Crab and Apple (although nothing like a Crabapple).
Looks like the kind of thing you’d find in Freddie Krueger’s lunch box. Grim.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA yeah it does look evil, where did you see it?? i want to buy some
woah, i love those things, i don’t know the english word for them either.
I got them from the canteen at work. The whole tray of them looked terrifying I can tell you.
Everyone can relax anyway, T will be along in a minute to tell us what they are. Homeboy knows things
They’re called water Caltrop or water chest nuts. Delicious, but be careful, they can contain the larvae of a parasite (Fasciolopsiasis) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_caltrop
Apparently 50 % of the chinese rural population used to have those worms around 1925!
Thanks Gao Han!
“water caltrop can help fever and drunkenness”
I should have stocked up for Christmas.
dang it. logged in too late.
water chestnuts. you often see them shelled and fried with savory food.
Forget it T, there’s a new kid in town.
btw Gao Han, do you have any funny stories about famous rappers from days gone by?
It looks like Dan Shapiro’s moustache
They’re beautiful. I want to decorate my house with them. Wouldn’t they make nice knobs for the cabinet doors?
@ swiss james,
Noop… not my kind of thing…
Happened to know these things about the water chest nut, because in one of my lectures I showed my students an episode of BBC’s “Medical Mavericks”. The guy who found out about it swallowed a few of these worms… nicely re-enacted… and more of those delicious scenes…
Yes, water chestnuts. I often drank water chestnuts juice in Southeast Asia.
I guess it’s the season for these? I used to eat these when I was a kid. Is there a proper way to break these out of the shell?
Reminds me of the thingies lurking in the underground carpark at our condo.
Will be happy to roast them on an open fire if it was permitted
They look like gremlin heads!
Yikes, they look creepy…I’ve eaten some really odd looking things in Asia however so I do know that creepy can equal good!
Ian
where did you get it?
OMG! my mom recently found these at a Chinese supermarket in Vancouver and went on and on about how good they are
they are pretty good.. i must say
What’s shown in the picture are Water Caltrop (Trapa bicornis), which are unrelated to the Water Chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis) commonly seen in Chinese restaurants in the West. They are sometimes inaccurately referred to as water chestnuts, and also (more accurately) ling nuts in English.
These fruits are pretty non-standard looking, as they are like a mix between a coconut, a sweet potato, and an apple. I added the sweet potato in there because their shape is somewhat similar to how a sweet potato is shaped. One would assume that they would start tasting good after a couple were eaten, as is the case with almost all other fruits, or foods in general.