Nattuvadumai Paal [Indian Almond Milk]

Nattuvadumai, the country badam, Terminalia catappa, the Indian almond or the sea almond grows everywhere in Pondicherry. It is one of those nondescript tropical trees that asks for little care, grows on sand or soil, tolerates abiotic conditions (salt spray and coastal winds in particular), but makes an urban space greener and provides shade on many a roadside.

It gets the first half of its Latin name, Terminalia, from the spiral clustering of its broad, ovate leaves at the end of its branches, and the second half, Catappa, from the Malay “Ketapang”: it is native to Malaysia, parts of South East Asia, and the Andaman Islands. It has been naturalized in many tropical regions of the world and is especially abundant in littoral or nearshore areas, where it’s been introduced both for ornamental value and as a sand dune stabiliser and is considered somewhat invasive, out-competing other slow-growing endemic species [source].

Terminalia Catappa is andromonoecious, which is to say that it has both perfect and staminate flowers, and indeed multiple perfect flower types: some yielding apomictic fruits (no pollination needed), and the others yielding fruit from either self-pollination (autogamy) or pollination from another flower on the same plant (geitonogamy).

It’s a deciduous oddity for a tropical tree, shedding leaves that turn red-purplish-yellow twice a year–almost the same colors as its ripe fruits, whose colors stain fingers, clothes, lips, and have a tart, berry-like flavor (which makes khungu/kungu juice in East Africa, not to be confused with “kungu,” likely a derivative of kumkuma, which is the word used for all colors of “Indian holi powder” in the same regions). Its fruits are sessile, laterally compressed, ovoid to ovate, smooth-skinned drupes, really, adapted to be dispersed over long-distances by sea currents: the origin of the name “sea almond.” They’re quite beloved to squirrels and bats, too!

The leaves make a ready disposable, biodegradable plate for hot food. And a fun fact: they also reduce the pH of aquarium tank water, release anti-bacterial and anti-fungal compounds, promoting fin rot healing and spawning, too.

Most everyone in the tropical world knows the Nattuvadumai or naattu badam, but very few rely on it for its nut. “Why?” I asked a man once. “Why pay so much for almonds in the shops when these trees and their fruit are free and abundant everywhere?” He answered with what I already knew, but was unwilling to fully accept: the drupes can be impossible to penetrate, the nuts are small and tough to extract, they crush easily if you knock the shells the wrong way. All told, the effort-to-value ratio on this one seemed a bit off. The very tough, husk-like outer fruit that protects these seeds on their salty water seaward journeys is what makes them difficult for humans to get at. They’re a bit like coconuts, both in their anatomy and in their love of sea and salt and sun.

I listened to the explanations, and wondered why the same is never said of cashews, which have burned many a set of hands to keep the industry buzzing. My mother, who has grown up around these trees, didn’t understand it either: “How many we have broken and eaten as children,” she said, “You have to know how and there is a way.” And a watchman we know, an old Christian man, whose wizened countenance broke into a wide smile when I mentioned these almonds reminisced: “We used to collect the fruits during the week, and Saturday-Sunday we would sit and open them. That was our work.” He laughed, and I with him picturing the intensity of his childhood preoccupation. What of the difficulty of opening the nuts? “You have to know how to hit them,” he said, “Then it’s easy… You don’t even need to peel off the fruit. When its a little raw, it has its own taste.” In fact, all those who cherish the memory of collecting these on seasides or from backyard trees, from my parents’ generation or my own, insist that although it’s tough, there is indeed an art to it.

All this made me think that Indian almonds may not have been prized by adults like regular almonds [Prunus amygdalus], being more of a seaside-backyard childhood foraging delight. Nattuvadumai were the country cousins to the imported, exotic almond after all. But I wondered also if some proper equipment and well-honed technique couldn’t now make these desi almonds a viable local alternative to their exotic Californian counterparts, off-setting some of the enormous ecological impact of the latter in this age of the nut-milk crazes spawned by the critiques of dairy farming and lacto-intolerances at multiple levels.

Some of the new crop of foraging foodies in the Western world are not above calling this a “weird food”, going at it cave-man style with big rocks and boorishness, so I guess it’s not been “discovered” yet. It may be a good idea for us not to wait until they do, lest they then start preaching its virtues to the underdeveloped, nutritionally starved world.

Sea almonds or regular, nuts and dried fruits were never for us common ingredients to be consumed in vast quantities. They were usually dearly purchased and brought from far away; they were often special gifts squirreled away in Godrej cupboards and used only very sparingly, in small quantities, and often only ceremonially. By that logic of economics and consumption, there’s not much that’s wrong with the regular almond. It’s only the flours and the milks and the cavalier notion that one should be able always to buy as many almonds as one pleases or scale up its consumption as a vegan, plant-based solution to the atrocities of dairy farming that’s the problem. For that, the Indian almond offers a possible workaround.

Think of it: drought-resistant, salt-resistant, tolerant of coastal winds and abiotic habitats, and already everywhere–with a nut that looks and tastes astonishingly like the real almond, except with almost coconutty tones and in thinner, more elongated form. For an hour of hard work, you’re rewarded with about a cup of kernels–more than enough for a payasam or an akkaravadisal garnish, or several almond milk nightcaps.

Note that the common Indian almond milk or badam pal is not, not the same stuff that’s marketed in tetra-packs as a dairy alternative. It’s not almonds ground with water and the milk extracted, but just a few almonds, less than 10, soaked and skins removed, ground and added to regular milk, sweetened and flavored with cardamom–maybe some saffron, maybe some turmeric or gaund/ gond and all that is warming in the winter-times, a pinch of black pepper or thippili [long pepper] for the throat. This all thickens milk enough to produce a few rich-but-small servings: coffee tumbler-sized, or thinned to greater volumes. An energy drink in the mornings, a soothing, soporific pre-bedtime drink at night.

It’s easy to make this vegan with coconut milk, though that does alter taste considerably and makes it less suitable as a pre-bedtime soother. But that’s the trade-off.

Either way, the almonds used are few and treated as the rare, precious treat they ever ought be.

Cracking the Indian Almond

You’ll find a lot of fallen sea almonds on beaches and in coastal areas–watch out for them. They have a fibrous, husky exterior which is only a little more pulpy when ripe and red, and a kernel tucked deep within an equally fibrous “shell”–a little like a small, hard coconut. The very features that protect this little seed on its seaward voyages are likely what make the kernel so hard to access.

My neighbor Ranu sent over a bagful of these almonds from the tree in her compound, already partially dried. I had to penetrate the outer husk with a knife, revealing the all-important joint you see in the image just below. It wasn’t easy. Knowing that the edge of the drupe was right above this joint did not help, because hitting it there did nothing more than dent the outer husk and eventually crush the almond kernel within.

Working with fresher fruit will likely make it it easier to peel off (or chew off!) the pulp first, reveal the joint and then dry in the hot sun — and finally use a stone or a hammer to direct precise blows. That, I think, will be the simplest way to process these.

Having found the joint on a sufficiently desiccated nut, it is then easy enough to knock directly on it. Most crack obligingly along that line opening out as you see below, maybe with a little help from a sharp heavy-duty knife or small machete tip, releasing a single elongated, elegant little almond kernel and leaving behind a husk (it’s not a shell, it’s a husk) that looked itself like a pair of Carnival glasses. It took me an hour or so to get the handful you see in the third image below–enough for a couple of servings of not-too-thick Nattuvadumai paal for each of the four of us.

Nattuvadumai paal or Indian Almond Milk

A warm, soothing and richly flavored milk made from Indian country almonds, turmeric and spices, as an alternative to regular almonds–these are from the Terminalia Catappa tree that grows everywhere in coastal regions and leaves a far smaller ecological footprint than regular almonds.

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Ingredients

  

• 15-20 Indian almonds or sea almonds
• 1 teaspoon gaund or gum arabica
• 1 teaspoon of ghee (to fry the gaund; see notes for vegan options)
• 2 green cardamom pods
• 4 black peppercorns
• 2 thippili or long pepper
• ½ litre whole fat milk (see notes for vegan options)
• ¼ cup sugar, or to taste
• ¼ teaspoon turmeric
• A generous pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated
• A few strands of saffron, optional

Instructions

 

• Soak the Indian almonds for several hours and up to overnight. Add a little water and blend them to a fine paste. Set aside.
• In a small tempering pan, heat the ghee (or oil) and when it is smoking or near-smoking, drop in the gaund. It will puff and whiten like popcorn. Remove it with a slotted spoon and transfer to a mortar or where it can be crushed into a powder with a stone. Set aside.
• Peel the cardamom and extract the seeds. Crush those along with the peppercorns and thippili together into a semi-fine powder. Set aside.
• Boil the milk (or heat it until it’s steaming). Add about a cup of milk to the Indian almond paste and then pour that back into the milk. Whisk well to combine. Reduce the flame to medium-low.
• Add the sugar, mix to dissolve.
• Simmer very gently on low heat for just a minute or so until the milk thickens just slightly. Drop in the saffron strands, if using. Now whisk in the turmeric, pepper-thippili powder, powdered gaund and nutmeg powder—and it’s done.
• To foam it up, pour it from saucepan to saucepan, increasing the height of the milk stream as much as you can each time. Transfer to glasses or cups in the final pour and serve warm-hot.

Notes

• You can use a half-fat milk for this, but not skim—some fats are needed to dissolve the turmeric and draw out what’s valuable in the pepper.
• To make this recipe vegan, substitute the ghee with any mild-flavored oil and use freshly extracted coconut milk instead of regular cow’s milk. Since coconut milk will break with too vigorous heating, whisk a little of it into the almond paste with a little water, and heat this thoroughly. Then take it off the flame and whisk in the remaining coconut milk and proceed with the recipe as written.