The Incredible Stories of the "Tree That Provides All Necessities"

[Music] you fly to the tropics southeast Asia the Caribbean Zanzibar or the SE shells what's the first thing you're going to do well for a lot of us living out that Beachside fantasy means you grab a seat by the ocean and order something made from coconut maybe it's a p colada a bowl of Curry a sweet dessert or even just the coconut itself cracked open and served with a straw and a spoon it's the symbol of paradise the flavor of the islands and it's literally the taste of a good time but for the people who live in that climate year round it's so much more than just a treat throughout history it's been a source of water of firewood of fiber for making rope and of the means to sustain an entire Society for thousands of years it's arrival in a new place has been met with religious celebration creation Legends and of course a reinvention of local Cuisine So today we're following the story of the coconut tracing its spread and its impact on both ancient and Modern Life telling its wildest stories and of course tasting as much as we can of the definitive flavor of [Music] paradise in 1883 on an Indonesian island in the Sunda straight between Sumatra and Java a massive volcanic eruption would shake the ground with such intensity that its reverberations could be felt across the entire planet it triggered a tidal wave that capsized boats in South Africa and the English Channel and the sound alone could be heard within a radius of more than 3,000 km within 3 days almost the entire island of katoa was gone sunk into the ocean along with the other land masses that once made up an archipelago and that would be the end of the story for more than a generation but 44 years later in 1927 seismic activity in the Sunda Strait began again before long another eruption would take place this time not destroying an island but creating a new one a land mass that would be named anak katow or child of katoa the island of course was barren made a volcanic rock that would Harden into the very beginning of a land formation so it was quite a surprise in 1929 when researchers arrived on its Shores and found one plant already thriving that of course was the coconut the reason why I bring this up first is that this was an irrefutable demonstration of something researchers long assumed which was that coconuts can spread across long distances by themselves floating along with the ocean current and wherever they wash up on shore sure they can start to take root in other words there's no way for us to say exactly where the first coconut came from it's impossible they float the reason it's important to say that upfront is that coconuts today are one of the most beloved items in the entire culinary World there are a lot of claims about who gets credit for being the first to crack One open and drink the water to soak and strain the meat into coconut milk or to add it into curries or desserts or anything else made better by putting in some coconut but separating fact from fiction when it comes to this ingredient is really really hard the oldest coconut fossils or at least the fossils of something round and hard shelled have been found by archaeologists as far apart as New Zealand and Southern India botanists say it came from Papa New Guinea linguists trace it to Southeast Asia and anyway none of this matters because again they can float by the time the first humans walked the planet coconuts or at least some distant Rel relative might have already been in all of these different places but that doesn't mean that we can't find some answers for the sake of this video we're going to follow one specific plant a tree called the Cocos nufera the coconut you know and the one that would change the world and with that let's start our story at the very beginning of the recorded history of the coconut [Music] walking through a Southeast Asian market in this case just north of downtown Bangkok everything sold has its own Legend there are street foods that Trace back to the ethnic man the native Thai the Chinese malaise Indians and a dozen forgotten cultures and dynasties but if we're really looking for history the oldest things served the staple that would be recognizable to the earliest time travelers would would most likely be this The Humble coconut hacked open and served as a refreshing hot weather drink the type of coconut served in this part of the world is known as the new V and it's this plant that doesn't just tell the story of the settlement and exploration of much of the tropics it enabled it in almost every conceivable way now while we might not know the origin of the plant itself we can definitively mark the time and place it was first domesticated first plant and selectively bred for the best traits and it was here in Southeast Asia actually about 1500 M away from Bangkok in the Philippines sometime after 3000 BC before then much of Island Southeast Asia was only sparely inhabited by indigenous hunter gatherers but that would change with the arrival of the so-called austronesians who landed in the Philippines on boats from Taiwan about 5,000 years ago they buil the first permanent settlements on the island islands and even today their descendants make up the majority of the country's population now the austronesians are known to the history books as some of the world's great seaf farers the ocean exploring super civilization that would settle lands far and wide and leave a colossal imprint on the modern world and it is true that their proficiency on the water brought them from China to Taiwan and Taiwan to L on but they didn't arrive in the Philippines as explorers they arrived as rice farmers and for the first 1500 years after settling the islands that's more or less how they'd remain but something in those, 500 years would change the austronesians something would open up the vast oceans to their exploration and send them almost all at once to the farthest corners of the known and unknown world you can probably guess what that was in the Philippines the austronesians encountered the coconut and it would be their discovery of every use of the plant that would come to Define their impact on society they drank the water of course and they probably ate the meat too although that's just a guess what we do know for a fact however is that they burned the husks as firewood they made rope from the fibers of the shell and made the shell itself into tools and implements and when their Villages grew into cities they domesticated the coconut planting the tree wherever it would grow in crossbreeding for more useful characteristics and one of the reasons their cities grew at all was that because of the coconut the austronesians found a way not just to stay hydrated but to preserve food to keep protein from spoiling even in tropical conditions and that technique of fermenting both the water and the sap of the coconut into vinegar created not just a means of survival but formed the foundations of a cuisine in fact it's a Cuisine that in the Philippines the old home of the austronesians still exists [Music] today this is a restaurant called new Mau High a place we visited once before on the channel and one of bangkok's only restaurants serving homecooked Filipino food that was the video where we also brought up the huge amount of influences that would change the cuisine but at the heart of everything is the technique of pickling something in coconut vinegar it's the origins of adobo long before foreigners brought soy sauce and brazing techniques it was a simple dish of preserved pork and today we're here for a plate of Kinny Lao fish typically Spanish mackerel cooked in coconut vinegar maybe the oldest single dish we know in Southeast Asia an influence on today's Central American Ceviche and in the modern days enhanced with things like chili onion and often coconut milk and toasted [Music] coconut well apparently I didn't learn my lesson last time that coming to a Filipino restaurant especially this one and asking for just we just need one thing just a small plate so I can show the use of coconut vinegar of course now I am overloaded with food and uh there's no such thing as coming here and not being welcomed like family which means having a gigantic [Music] meal so interesting just kind of thinking about like coconut we think of coconut as a way to make a dish sweeter you know or rounder or thicker in this case it's not sweet it's not thick um the coconut is a preservative which you know you use the coconut vinegar I some of my favorite versions of this in the Philippines you'll also use some desiccated or dried coconut for [Music] texture all right so we pick up in the Philippines with the first cultivated coconut trees and it didn't take long for the austronesians with the ability to preserve food through making vinegar a portable source of fresh water wood made from coconut Trunks and rope made from the husks well they got back on the water and this time they could go as far as they wanted their exploration would establish contact with distant Empires and Spark a network of trade that would forever change Asian culture and Cuisine and along with trading far and wide they'd also settle distant Islands Malaysia and Indonesia Polynesia Hawaii New Zealand Madagascar and all of this done by Crossing oceans sustained by coconut water and meat preserved in coconut vinegar on boats that were themselves made using parts of the coconut now we already mentioned that coconuts themselves can cross oceans by floating on the water so we can't be certain that they weren't already there in at least some of these places when the austronesians arrived but there are a few reasons to believe that that wasn't the case first there has been modern testing of how far a coconut can actually float before it's no longer able to sprout a new plant and the best guess is about 7 weeks more than enough time to get from Sumatra to katoa but given the inconsistency of ocean currents on the Open Water it might not get too much farther than that second the genetic makeup of coconuts found along the path of the austronesians matches the domesticated version introduced in the Philippines and third there's the language we know the austronesians found coconuts in the Philippines because in the Indigenous Taiwanese language which came from the austronesians there isn't a word for coconuts but then in the Philippines all of a sudden we start to see references to something called the new and then as they started to travel well the word did too and that tells us not just where the austronesians went but where they spread the [Music] coconut [Music] in an office building in bangkok's Salon might be the only Nai Padang lunch counter in all of Bangkok the north Sumatran style of eating that on the island might showcase dozens upon dozens of tastes and flavors textures and colors many incorporating use of the coconut here it's a toned down selection but oh my goodness am I excited to find this in my home [Music] City [Music] Indonesian food is not as sweet as Thai food in general um so you get a different kind of side of the flavor of coconut because this is intensely coconuty but maybe lacking the the sweetness you find in a Thai version of coconut curry it's not worse um it's different and it all depends on your own palette but man this is this is so cool to find this year man can you get a closeup I want you to zoom in on this I'm just going to show you how much this meat falls apart when um when I push down with the spoon and you see I'm not cheating I already did that on my own so I'm going to take this part of the meat and I'm just going to push it down and you see it just it just broke like that falls apart it's dry it looks dry it is dry but in 7 hours of cooking in coconut milk along with a ton of spices it just it all absorbs and Cooks into the meat so you end up with this just meat itself tastes like coconut you know along with I mean the list of spices is is is this long that you have to use to make beep and D um it's my favorite thing to cook because I I get not when I'm not cooking in a restaurant when I'm at home Zen for me I like to just put music on crack open a beer and then just cook and uh this is 7 hours of stirring you're just watching it you're stirring you can do a couple other dishes on the side in the meantime uh you can make this a little faster if you do smaller portions but why would you make a smaller portion of the beef Rong you want this this stuff will keep forever and so you might as well make a lot of it although somehow it's never lasted us more than two or 3 days all right I'll make this part short but let me quickly explain what a coconut actually is it's not really a nut but then neither are cashews or almonds both of which are related to the coconut see they're all members of a family called droops which are fruits that produce some kind of a hard material along with a protective flesh droops Encompass everything from peaches and mangoes to olives and even coffee all of which evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years to adapt to various conditions and some droops are closer to the coconut than you might think for example the coconut plant is a palm tree that grows in a climate range of between 20 and 32° C or 68 to 89 f it needs access to lots of water in the kind of soil that allows fast absorption like for example beach sand and because of those conditions instead of developing a hard seed on the inside meant to be be spread by birds or mammals it evolved a shell on the outside so it can float on water but the same plant just a bit further Inland in the same temperature range but in drier climates and without access to ocean currents well over the course of history that became something else altogether the date palm coconut trees can grow as high as 30 m tall with wood considered just as sturdy as the stuff found in forests and it's fast growing as much as 2 ft per year a typical coconut reaches maturity in about 6 to 10 years producing around 30 fruits every 12 months a number that can reach as high as a 100 over a lifetime that can stretch more than a century and with that let's get back to the path of the coconut from the time the austronesians arrived in the Philippines for almost 2500 years the story of the coconut is pretty straightforward we have fossils genetics and even language to guide us along the path but at some point between the 7th and fourth Century BC the austronesians would encounter Coastal India and that's when the story well it gets a lot more complicated now we know that the austronesian Traders brought their domestic coconut and it was accepted by the Indians I mean back to the word new it's the root of Hindi naral which itself comes from Sanskrit first recorded around around the time of those encounters about 300 BC but remember I said in the open that tracing the origins of the coconut was not so simple and there are a lot of questions about what the austronesians actually found when they arrived in the subcontinent which brings us to the next part of our story to start We Begin Again with language and as with so much in Ancient India with religion the first written record of the coconut recorded in Sanskrit was in the mahabarata first put on paper around again 300 BC and actually referring to coconuts with two words narik Kella the root of narial and also Kaa vishka which means a tree that provides all of the necessities of life now it doesn't necessarily change anything in our timeline but the coconut by the time of this writing was in India venerated sacred and it had its own non austronesian origin stories according to Hindu tradition the coconut palm was created by the Bahari vishwamitra one of the great sages of ancient India the short version is that the legendary King Satya verata was literally thrown out of heaven for entering while in human form so visha Mitra used his power to stop his friends Fall by constructing a wooden pole and as such coconuts were created to resemble King SAA verata himself with the black spots representing his eyes and the fiber his hair there are other origin legends from different Indian kingdoms and cultures one gives credit to pararam the sixth Avatar of Vishnu in that story pararam set out to create his own Paradise so he stood at the edge of the water and threw his axe this formed what we call carala the first thing he created for his new land was the coconut and that's why to this day the name carola translates to the land of coconut trees there are also stories that say that coconuts again when the ancient Lord koua vanan gizar took the form of a coconut tree to provide nourishment to a pregnant woman who was hungry and thirsty and many ancient legends write that the goddess bhavati herself is the soul of the coconut palm across India Sri Lanka and the Maldives as far back as the written record coconuts are used in religious offerings planted outside homes venerated as sacred and most of all said to be endemic to the subcontinent in India the idea that coconuts were not introduced but are actually native is widely believed today at least within local culture it's even said that heroin were using coconuts a thousand years before this story even began although that's probably nonsense since it's based on the discovery of one round sculpture I mean it could be a basketball but still where there's smoke there's burning coconut husk fire here's what we know there are two types of coconut two varieties of fos new safera that today can be found in different parts of the world the new V native to the Philippines and one called the new kafa which is what would starting around the first century ad travel farther abroad with Indian Traders they both come from the same plant new V bred to produce more water better for long ocean voyages and new kafa with more meat and a thicker husk better to use for building materials and cooking into coconut milk then the new vay was what the austronesians introduced to India but within a couple hundred years at the most at least according to Conventional history Indian Traders span the globe carrying new kafa something doesn't make sense there would seem to be two more likely possibilities first the austronesians came much earlier than previously believed and over time Indian Farmers cultivated their own domestic breed to suit local needs this would explain not just the word new in local language but also another word 10 the root of the name for the coconut in most South Indian dialects which translates more or less to something that arrived from the south or second by the time the Traders arrived in India their Filipino coconuts would simply be introduced to a culture that was already making extensive use of their own native strain one that like the date palm had evolved on its own millions of years earlier and which was very much endemic to the Indian subcontinent anyway let's try some new [Music] coffa [Music] you if you followed this channel you have seen me making excuse after excuse about how we can find a way to come back and film here again uh we didn't make it in our protin on video this was where we did one of our very first OTR videos ever nobody saw it uh when we cooked with chef manell and learned how to make this which is doll or the Sri Lankan version of of doll which is a lentil Curry um however today now the story of the coconut it's a great chance to come back here so three things on the table other than rice we have uh coconut Sall coconut in in uh ciz is called pole so this is p sball uh this is the big Revelation to me of Sri Lankan food this thing is like I mean we filmed the the making of it but it's like it's coconut uh and then it's pounded or mixed with what citrus a little bit of sugar onion chili and it is incredible it is the most addictive side dish you can possibly imagine you would do with everything in Sri Lanka whenever Dar and I come to pratunam which is where we are we um doesn't matter where we go to eat on our way home we stop here and get at least this to take with us and then we have the polaro which is a bread made from from coconut and that's all this is we we we didn't overdo it because we still have another stop today um and we've been eating and normally I would I would order stuff that would cover the table here but Sri Lankan food talk about a different and fascinating use of the coconut in Savory and sweet [Music] application [Music] the thing about coconut is I think a lot of people don't really know what it tastes like and I don't mean that as an insult but I mean it's one of those things that if you you know normally nine times out of 10 when you find it it's got sugar added to it you know in a package of coconut milk in a coconut cake in something that's the flavor of coconut is really the flavor of coconut plus sugar and and one thing that I really love about Sri Lankan food is that and some applications in Thai food although it's really well done in South India and Sri Lanka is coconut that tastes like coconut you know and it has it's not necessarily something that only needs to be applied in um sweeter applications this is just this is just [Music] awesome the history of the coconut in the Indian subcontinent is fascinating but perhaps even more important is what happened starting around the 1 Century BC when Indian Traders took the place of the old austronesians as the new Global ambassadors of the coconut now if you watched our video about Curry you'll know what happened just a short time later the Indians began trading almost exclusively with the a Arabs who in turn became astronomically wealthy selling Indian spices everywhere and of course not just spices but coconuts as well now unlike dried cardamom and black pepper coconuts had a somewhat limited market remember they can only thrive in certain conditions pretty much only found between 26° north of the equator and 26° to the South but there were markets within the Arab spice trade that fit the needed criteria for example North Africa which is why a long time later Marco Polo would name the Sumatran coconut the pharaoh's nut named after the plant that he already knew from Egypt the Arabs would introduce the coconut further south along the African Coast as well and they'd find a market in the Persian Gulf especially the countries of Oman and Yemen who used it to make their own boats called Dows modeled after the Arab vessels which themselves were derived from those from India using coconut fiber to tie coconut wood planks together with no Nails needed in fact it was in Oman where another legendary traveler ibben batuta wrote about his own encounter with the coconut in his writing he used the Arabic name which is still used today given to the coconut by those in the Middle East juat Al hind or the Walnut of India well that's one of the Arabic names another is the narel which comes from Hindi narial itself derived from the austron new by the way since we bring up the austronesians again let me just quickly spend one moment talking about their legacy because while the Indians and Arabs were sending coconuts to the Red Sea the coast of Africa and the Persian Gulf the coconut would have an enormous impact on life throughout the South Pacific where it had arrived from the Philippines it's not hugely relevant to this story but it does feel incomplete to make this video without acknowledging that side of the world because by this point in history life was thriving in the tropics and a big reason why was of course the coconut we talked about the Indian legends of the creation of the coconut but in the South Pacific they also developed their own Cannon for example there's one popular one involving a Fijian King who fell in love with a girl named Cena the king transformed himself into an eel swam to her Island and professed his adoration but before she could respond the girl's parents saw the eel talking with their daughter and in a fit of somewhat understandable anger cut off his head the girl was heartbroken and buried the head in the soil where it would sprout a coconut tree and from then on whenever she would take a drink from a coconut she would be kissing the king and that's just one version of that story there are dozens of variations from Polynesia to New Zealand in Hawaii folk songs sing about the coconut with one ancient ballad still well known in the present day called NE olah hiiki or ola life-giving coconut that came to us from Tahiti the islands of the South Pacific would give the world a new variation of coconut called the new Lea or dwarf coconut which was most likely domesticated in Tonga and they'd give the world the names that we still attach to the most popular varieties new ve and newfa which are taken from the language of Samoa anyway between the austronesians the Indians and the Arabs by the 15th century ad coconuts could be found throughout much of the old world Tropics which brings us to the Age of [Music] Exploration the story of The Colombian Exchange is pretty well known it's the period of time starting in 1492 where New World ingredients things like chili peppers tomatoes and potatoes found their way to the other side of the ocean we've covered this many times before but but until now on the channel we've generally focused on the stuff headed east but the Colombian Exchange was an exchange and plenty of Old World ingredients traveled West too that would include things like livestock like horses pigs and cattle plants like coffee from Ethiopia and Yemen sugar cane from India citrus from Southeast Asia and of course coconuts if you watched our video on the chili pepper you might remember that we can identify the Roots taken by the Spanish and the Portuguese by what varietals they took from the Americas it's the same way the other way around with coconuts in this case the Spanish had a direct link from the Philippines the home of the new V by way of their gallan trade route from Manila to aapco Mexico through that trade they introduced the austronesian coconut to the west coast of the Americas as far north as California and as far south as Peru the Portuguese on the other hand took their coconuts from India which they loaded their boats with new kafa delivering those to the West Indies the west coast of Africa Brazil Venezuela and Latin America and they'd also end up in what's now the United States after one of the boats overturned after leaving the island of Trinidad don't forget the main theme of this video coconuts can float so in no time a few thousand new kafa drifted to shore in Florida Landing in a place that we now call Palm Beach County and that's why today the United States of America has two coasts lined with two completely different strains of coconut now even though coconuts don't grow in much of Europe the Portuguese did introduce the plant to the continent although it could only be sold in dried form which is why most recipes there are for things like cookies or pastries but perhaps Portugal's most important and Lasting contribution at least for this story is the name coconut that term was first used by the Portuguese around the year 1500 depending on who you believe either derived from Coco meaning monkey or Koko Ruto which translates to the top of the head and while Coco is more widely accepted there are those who say that it's not just the other one but that it was personally coined by the famous explorer Vasco deama a noted admirer of the coconut [Music] a [Music] this is a place called laia It's a small restaurant hidden behind Bangkok Hospital and the brainchild of Sue short for sasada a Thai woman who fell in love with Portuguese food while traveling across Europe she spent Years Learning recipes and finally quit her job as an IT manager in Germany to instead bring her favorite Cuisine back to her home country do you think that you know when you look at again my channel is Food history we you know there's so much contributions that the era of exploration the Portuguese trading ships had to changing food all over the world and in Thailand the Portuguese brought egg based cooking you know Portuguese brought as you said from the new world chili peppers tomatoes potatoes all kinds of things like this but Portuguese food is unknown does it make you happy to introduce Thai people to Portuguese food because there's such a connection between Tha and Portugal yes yes many Tha are very surprised when I tell the story and I'm happy they know that I'm happy that they like well start realizing that um we are connected to to Portuguese people from very very old time but like now it's faded but I hope I hope like through through me they starting again a little I'm just going to sneak sneak some so how should I eat this I just put some in a bowl I guess yeah and use that to kind of dip some bread and uh true you know how to I mean look there's I have a bowl I have a spoon and I have a bunch of food [Music] around the year 1895 a German man named August anglehart would find himself immersed in a movement called life reform which sought to honor God by eating only raw Whole Foods but angelard took it even further believing the only thing needed for consumption was the coconut so a few years later in 1902 he bought an island Plantation off the coast of Papa New Guinea and there he would start his cult he and his 15 German followers would live as nudists worship the Sun and live entirely off of coconut meat and water using other parts of the coconut as the only Provisions now this was a terrible idea a lot of people died and the ones who didn't fled one by one eventually anglehart would be the only one left and tourists would come to laugh at him he'd die on the island at the age of 44 the group as it was was called the order of the Sun but to everyone at that time it was Germany's coconut cult which as crazy as it sounds if you think about it just makes it an extreme modern version of the kind of coconut worship that we've seen around the world since the austronesians first left the Philippines it might not be a complete diet but it is a natural wonder and to A Primitive Society something that could provide so much in such a small package drinking water a source of food sugar firewood and sturdy Timber fiber for making rope or even clothing oil for frying vinegar for preserving flour for making bread even leaves for thatched roofs and shells as a utensil I mean this really was a gift from the gods find me any tropical country and I'll show you a place with a History built or altered by the coconut it's honored with songs Legends and religious offerings it's the the national symbol of the Maldives in a section of the crest on the flag of Fiji in parts of East Africa when a child is born a coconut tree is planted and until well into the 1900s whole coconuts were the official currency of the nicobar islands and love for the fruit isn't limited to the tropics in the United States coconuts are thrown to revelers during Marty gr and it said that it was Captain bl's harsh punishment for stealing coconuts that led to the Rebellion on the h Ms bounty in 1889 a British book identified 83 separate uses of the coconut including stuffing for pillows and making blinders for buls and since then the list has only grown during World War II scientists figured out that coconut water could substitute for human blood plasma so in the Pacific Theater sometimes it was an IV of coconut water that kept soldiers Alive by the 21st century you could find coconut creams or oils and Cosmetics at any pharmacy or skincare shop and at a liquor store you could buy it distilled into rum or used as a flavoring hell in 2008 it was used as biofuel to power a 747 but of course most of all there's the Coconut's contribution to Cuisine giving us everything from masaman Curry to Malaysian loxa Swedish chocolate balls to Brazilian bombocado Italian macaroons and Sri Lankan coconut sambal I can continue how many of the world's great Foods rely on the coconut imagine a universe without mango sticky rice beef renung cow soy or that P Cola or a kitchen without something made from coconut whether that's water milk cream oil flour sugar or the meat fresh dried or desiccated so who actually gets credit for the coconut well since it floats and we don't really know where it comes from and since so many cultures played a role in it spread around the World maybe the credit should go to the coconut itself after all it's the coconut that earned the name the tree that provides all Necessities from ancient South India the Mala call it the tree of a thousand uses and in the Philippines it's the tree of life so the next time you find yourself by a beach sipping a coconut for a few pennies remember how Priceless this simple fruit actually was for so many thousands of years [Music] subscribe to the channel for more from OTR thank you so much to everyone who supports us on patreon it makes this all possible find that link in the description along with our social media and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: OTR Food & History

Views: 465,106

Keywords: otr, OTR, coconuts, food history, the history of coconuts, kalpavrishka, niu vai, niu kafa, thai food, sri lankan food, indonesian food, portuguese food, thailand

Id: 96MpIxMxgow

Length: 41min 30sec (2490 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024