Today I will be presenting you a special vegetable having a lovely name! To make this famous Millionaire's Salad we absolutely need this vegetable!!!
HEART OF PALM
Heart of Palm or Coeur de Palmier in French , is endemic to my country infact! It is the inner core and growing bud of certain palm trees. Açaí palm and coconut can be taken are examples!
Heart of palm may be eaten on its own, and often it is eaten in a salad!
Brazil is the country producing the most of heart of palm in the world! This is mainly as the population consumes a lot! Equator and Costa Rica are the next biggest producers! Just the 3 of them represents 90% of the world production! That's huge!
This is a heart of palm plantation field! Most countries are gearing towards cultivated palms rather than the wild ones! This is very important for the protection of the species!
On a nutrition note , hearts of palm is rich in fibers, potassium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, copper, vitamins B2, B6, and C.
Brazil is also the world biggest consumer followed by France! Amongst the biggest consumers in the world we got Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Belgium and Israel!
In many importing countries , heart of palm are available in cans! However the fresh ones are the best!
In Mauritius a salad made with heart of palm is called the Millionaire's Salad as it is quite expensive! You must count minimum 10 Euro for 1 piece! But it is absolutely worth it!
This is how it looks after cultivation! To prepare it you need to further peel the different layers till you reach the soft parts!
Ok let's come back to our famous salad! Basically it is very easy to make it! You just need some lemon juice, olive oil , salt and pepper! Lemon juice is very important as it help keeping it white!
There are multiples ways of preparing different dishes from it! It can be eaten raw, in salad, poached, in gratin etc...
I have worked a lot with heart of palm in my career and I will present some of the plates that I created! Hope you enjoy it!
The below is a heart of palm salad with smoked salmon ! This is one of the most famous way to eat it here in Mauritius for a lunch on the beach mainly! This is a raw version of heart of palm!
This one I named it Heart of palm barigoule with red mullet and baby vegetables. Here the heart of palm is cooked in a broth with white wine and lemon! One of my favorite plate!
And lastly a plate I created for a fine dining restaurant : Duo of heart of palm , smoked marlin and bilimbi coulis.
In this dish, I used both raw heart of palm as salad as well as in puree.
So have you ever tasted HEART OF PALM? How was it?
Please do comment below! Should you like the post, kindly upvote and resteem!
Thank you!