When in Doubt, Go All Out 6WS

More adventures with tamarinds before I leave this subject.  I found that when you remove one from the shell, it has a kind of netting of fibers that pull off quite easily, leaving behind edible pulp, which you can pull apart into segments, each with a seed in the middle.  Eat off the pulp, very nice, and here are a few segments in the fridge, drying a little to see if that affects them

and I then wondered hm, what about the seeds.

I figured that since they are rock hard, they need help to germinate, just as big seeds like morning glory need a nick or abrasion and soaking.  So I put a couple directly into a little container of potting soil inside a baggie to act like a greenhouse

 
and I'm soaking another couple which I nicked, for a day or so before planting them.   

 
And since there are tons of seeds in the package, I have quite a few to experiment with.  Not hoping for a tree, exactly, just interested to see if I can get an interesting houseplant out of the experiment.

I did find a good recipe in my Indian cookbook for a sauce made with tamarind and ginger, which I'll try, since it looks good for a number of uses. I bet I end up with yet another little nameless container of red sauce in the freezer.

And I found a lot of total duds by googling, honestly, there ought to be a law.  Such as the dope who writes a recipe she names Tamarind Chicken Curry, no sign of any curry spices, then I notice that curry leaves are one of the ingredients.  She doesn't know it's not spicy? that curry leaves have nada to do with the spices involved in making a curry? evidently not.  You use them anywhere you'd use a bay leaf, add wonderful depth of flavor to vegetables.

Clearly not a knowledgeable cook, or perhaps her editor is at fault, but there's her recipe out there...probably a good chicken recipe, but not what you'd expect if you were all set to eat a nice chicken curry.  I blame the English language for calling these harmless little leaves by a wrong name, really.

This is why I was asking if any blogistas use tamarind in cooking, so that I'll get something that's worth trying.  If I find something good, if the sauce I found in my Indian cookbook is good, I'll let you know about it.  

There are as many dud recipes on the internet as there are quack medicines, and that's saying something.  And there are a lot of multi ingredient multi stage recipes that, as dogonart observed, aren't worth the trouble.  I like simple, and I think flavor likes simple, too. Not that I have any strong feelings on the matter, of course.

Adventures with Tamarinds

In which the intrepid shopper realizes that the Asian store is probably a likely place to find them, tamarind not being so exotic and strange to other nations, and indeed went there and did so.

These are fresh tamarinds, not processed or anything, and taste different from the little chunk our instructor gave me yesterday. I wonder if hers was dried in some way. Hers was more pungent, very delicious, but the fresh ones are gentler, still good, though.  Anyway, they're known as the date of India, and if you pinch off a bit of the flesh and taste, you'll see why.  But not as sweet as dates, and more interesting.

But that's getting ahead.  Here's the box as found in the store. The labels says to eat as snack, okay, I can manage that.  

Once open, I was a bit puzzled about what to do next. 

So I figured, oh just plunge in, famous last words, and broke one open. And this is how it looked.
 

The outer casing is brittle and has a fine network of lines inside. The flesh inside, in which I suppose are seeds, haven't got in there yet, is soft and easy to pinch off a bit to sample.  It all looks a bit x-rated, NSFW, but keep calm and carry on sampling.

My friend and handyman happened to stop in at that point to do some measuring, and he's also a great cook, so I made him taste, too.  Like me he'd heard of, but never eaten, tamarind.  Not sure he wants to proceed, but he did try it and said, hm, interesting.  His taste in food not quite as exotic as mine, but he's still game to taste anyway.

So I have to continue with this and see what happens.  They instruct you firmly to refrigerate them, so I will.  And I need to find out more activities than just eating as a snack, not that there's anything wrong with that..what do you do about seeds, etc.  

A couple of yesterday's group asked about tamarind paste, and the lecturer said no, not never, no, nasty, don't.  So I figured better to find the actual fruit.  If any innocent passers by among our blogistas knows any great recipes for tamarind, please say. 

I'm currently thinking of spreading with homemade soft cheese on bread.  But after that point, what next.