BEAUTIFUL INSIDES TO ADMIRE & TASTE

Biting into something that has a luscious inside is a great pleasure.  Finding a new texture, flavor, or color in the middle is a treat. We’ve taken a new look at some foods with the most beautiful insides.

 

Photo: Matze_ott. Lotus Flower.

The lotus is a plant of many faces.  You can marvel at the beauty of its flower, its broad platter-like leaves, it  beady seeds, and its root… and you can eat them all. Inside, the seeds poke timidly out of the fleshy circular pod looking out at their possibilities .

 

An individual lotus can live for over a thousand years. In 1994, a seed from a sacred lotus, dated at roughly 1,300 years old was successfully germinated. The genome of the sacred lotus (nelumbo nucifera) was sequenced in May 2013.

Photo: JJ. Lymm. Lotus Seed Sweet Soup.

Here’s a Taiwanese dessert made of lotus seeds, red dates and white fungus. It may not sound so yummy if you are not from that culture, but it’s a real treat.

 

LOTUS SEED, RED DATE, & WHITE FUNGUS DESSERT 紅棗，蓮子，白木耳甜品

by JJ.LYMM

 

Ingredients:

 

• Water lily seeds (same as Lotus Seeds)

• Red dates

• White fungus

• Brown sugar
   

The method 作法;

 

1. Soak all your dried ingredients for 3 hours or more (everything except for the sugar)

2. Clean your lotus seeds of any pieces of skin left on them

3. Cut up the white fungus and throw away the yellowy pieces which are hard

4. Boil half a pan of water and put the fungus in, heat up the pan again until it boils

5. Now take the white fungus out with a sieve and put it straight into very cold water (like iced water)

6. In another small pan boil up 500ml water, add the bowl of brown sugar, stir it

7. In the pan which had the white fungus add the lotus seeds and red dates, boil this up for 20 minutes

8. Wait for everything to cool down for about half an hour and mix all the things together in a big serving bowl

9. That’s it, 最佳養生美容甜點!! it’s ready to serve – this is the warm version, you can chill it in your fridge if you like it cold.

Photo: Courtesy of That’s the Secret Formula. Popped Lotus Seeds.

Popped lotus seeds are a cool upgrade from ordinary popcorn. Ecomom of Thats The Secret Formula shares her dad’s recipe, made simply with ghee, some salt and pepper.

 

MAKHANE (POPPED LOTUS SEEDS)

 

In a heavy skillet or kadhai (wok) heat a teaspoon of ghee, and swirl it around to coat the sides. Add 2 cups of makhane and toss well. Keep stirring over a low-medium flame for a few minutes until browned, aromatic, and crisp. Add the salt and pepper. Mix well.

Photo: Courtesy of Sabeermetrics. Lotus Seed Beer.

And, to wash down your lotus seed snack, reach for a lotus seed beer. The Scratch Brewing Company, a small microbrewery in Ava, Illinois, specializes in beers with lotus seeds, as well one varieties made with other seeds, leaves, roots, fruits and fungi foraged from a nearby wooded property. The concept is to create a taste of place -- like a wine’s terroir.

Photo: Sarah Locascio. Figs.

Figs have the most sensual insides of any fruit I know. Sarah Locascio, creator of Attic Lace, started playing with some figs, splitting them open, to reveal what she calls “beautiful and mysterious -- a serious fruit, classy and elegant.”

 

The common fig (Ficus carica) is a species of flowering plant native to the Middle East and western Asia, but now grown widely in temperate zones.

Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia. Common fig.

Although we call the fig a fruit, it isn’t. It is the infructescence or scion of the tree. The flower of a fig tree grows and blooms inside the fleshy infructescence, pollinated by a specializes fig wasp, Blastophaga psenes, that enters through a narrow orifice in each fig.

 

Figs are among the richest plant sources of calcium and fiber. According to USDA data for the Mission variety, figs are richest in fiber, copper, manganese, magnesium, potassium, calcium, and vitamin K, and contain many antioxidants. flavonoids and polyphenols.

Photo: Courtesy of the Produce Clerk’s Handbook. Dragon Fruit Cross Section.

The hot pink spiky dragon fruit is flamboyant on the outside. Its insides offer graphic relief of white with tiny black seeds speckled throughout. I prefer to look at this beauty rather than eat it. It is sweet and very bland.  

Photo: Courtesy of Food Republic. Dragon Fruit Shake.

But the dragon fruit can be a star in a fruit shake. Fruit shakes, or ‘Sinh to’, are so popular in Vietnam, there are dedicated streets just for Sinh to vendors.

 

Try this one from Vietnamese-Australian chef and TV host Luke Nguyen's new cookbook, The Food Of Vietnam.

 

DRAGON FRUIT SINH TO

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1 dragon fruit, peeled and sliced

• 1 cup crushed ice

• 1 tablespoon condensed milk
   

Directions:

 

1. Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend for 20 seconds, or until the ice has dissolved.

2. Serve in tall glasses.

Photo: Viveshni Joseph. Assorted Macarons.

The inside are the stars of macarons, despite their increasingly colorful exteriors.

Photo: Viveshni Joseph. Cardamom & Chai Buttercream Macaron.

Vivenshni Joseph, of Madame Macaronsa, makes her creamy fillings with surprising flavor notes, like cardamom and chai buttercream. They make a perfect finish to a beautiful insides celebration.

 

Read more about Beautiful Insides, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact in our posts throughout this week.

 

Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Insides. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 11.17.13.

 

Image: Courtesy of InterActiveMediaSW.

 

Also, check out our special competition: The Most Beautiful Sound in the World! We are thrilled about this effort, together with SoundCloud and The Sound Agency. And we can’t wait to hear what you’ve got!