Tuesday November 23, 2004 - What Malaysian plantation owners usually throwaway contains something tasty, nutritious and valuable, EMMELINE TANdiscovers.

What do you call a plant delicacy obtained from refuse material but whichcan still be dubbed the cleanest vegetable?

A hint: You see row upon row of the pre-refuse material growing onundulating hills along the highways.

A block of palm heart obtained from a single log. Each palm tree yieldsabout 4-5kg of palm heart.

There are more than 250 million oil palm trees in Malaysia. Due toharvesting difficulties as the trees grow too large, trees must bereplanted every 20 to 30 years and for this purpose and that of landdevelopment, more than 10 million trees are felled yearly.

Felled trees are usually left to rot in the sun. At the most, the bark isstripped and sent for processing in plywood factories. But who would havethought that the tender meristem of the abandoned trunk could yield adelicacy as highly esteemed as artichoke, asparagus and bamboo shoots?

The heart of palm, more commonly called palm heart or palm cabbage,consists of tender leaves that originate in and grow from the meristembefore they mature and sprout from the tree trunk as fronds. Palm heartcan be said to be baby palm leaves still in the womb. Palm heart has longbeen consumed as a delicacy in Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australiaand some parts of Asia.

Most of the world’s supplies come from Latin America where palm trees arecultivated not for the fruits, as we do in Malaysia, but more for the palmheart.

In Florida in the United States, palm heart was considered a poor man’sfood by Floridians and named swamp cabbage. During the Depression, it wasabundantly cut down as a cheap source of food.

However, it wasn’t long before people noticed its extreme tenderness anddelicacy and swamp cabbage rose in status to become a millionaire’s salad.The Florida government had to enact a state law to protect their statetree from ravenous gourmets.

The palm tree had flourished for years throughout Central and SouthAmerica. When Columbus arrived in the New World, the indigenous folk werealready taking full advantage of what they called the pejibaye (peachpalm) tree.

They housed themselves with its bark, put a roof over their heads with theleaves, ate the nuts of the mature tree and ate the centre core of theyoung plants.

Watch out, coconut tree. The palm tree is next in line to be named “treewith a hundred uses”. There are several thousand palm species distributedaround the tropical world. All have edible hearts.

Perhaps 100 species have hearts that are large enough to be commercialisedand most are used in cuisine. Within this group of palms, there are somewith hearts that are slightly sweet, others that are bland, and a few thatare bitter.

The Malaysian oil palm (Elais guineesis) heart has a rich, creamy flavourand a tender texture. Analyses have been conducted to certify that palmheart is a good source of vitamin E, potassium and dietary fibre, and amoderate source of magnesium and iron.

A worker shredding pieces of palm heart into thin slices.

Despite the abundant supply of unwanted oil palm trunks and the nutritiousvalue of the palm heart, the palm heart has somehow escapedcommercialisation in Malaysia. Until now. Co-founders of Cedar FoodIndustries Sdn Bhd Ooi Chui Seng and Patrick H’ng have undertaken theventure to bring the palm heart to Malaysians nicely packaged andconveniently sold in our neighbourhood stores.

Ooi, who is director of the Seberang Prai-based company, said they werethe first in Malaysia to have successfully developed the process ofcommercially producing palm heart. A few corporations did start someresearch, but they never managed to develop a method of extracting thepalm heart from the tree trunk and so abandoned the venture, he said. Thedifficulty in extraction lies in knowing how much bark should be strippedoff, the storage temperature for the ‘raw’ trunk and the pre-cut process.

Ooi’s partner H’ng was the one who got the idea for the venture two yearsago when he was doing his post-graduate studies in Britain.

He saw that palm heart was highly valued over there and he thought, whynot give it a try in Malaysia? Countries were planting palm trees just forthe heart of the palm and charging exorbitant prices for the produce andhere we were in Malaysia leaving money to decompose in the sun!

Ooi said that from a tree trunk weighing about 1,500kg, about 4-5kg ofpalm heart could be obtained.

In harvesting palm heart, the palm tree is first cut down and the thinbark of the trunk stripped off in the field for compost, leaving the whitefibre of the tree trunk.

The trunk is composed of concentric circles of white fibre around a centrestem. Logs of this trunk are then stored in the factory cold room beforethe next step.

During processing, the outer concentric layers of fibre are removed. Thisleaves the cylindrical centre core, which is the heart of palm. Ooi’smethod of stripping the outer layers of fibre is the key to his success inprocessing the palm heart and his trade secret.

The block of palm heart is smooth and white. Its cylindrical shape bulgesout towards the bottom, just as how the trunk broadens towards the base.

The range of products that can be produced from palm heart dried palmheart, canned palm heart, dried sweetened palm heart with honey, pickledpalm heart, jam and spaghetti sauce.The Chinese call the palm heart pan tian soon, which means ‘shoots thatgrow halfway up in the sky’, said Ooi.

The block of palm heart is then cut into blocks before being cut intothinner pieces according to the shape required. A coconut-like smell fromthe sliced palm heart pervaded the processing room.

Palm heart can be consumed in a variety of ways, the highest in demandbeing the dried palm heart which can be cooked in dishes in place ofbamboo shoots. For this, the shredded pieces of palm heart must be driedin large ovens for more than 12 hours.

Palm heart is actually 90% water. This is also why palm heart must beimmediately processed once it is extracted. Otherwise, it will grow mouldyin our humid weather.

From half a kg of raw palm heart, we can only get 50g of dried palm heart.The current market price for a 50g packet of dried palm heart in Malaysiais around RM4, which some people say is too expensive. Well, they shouldremember that they are actually getting 500g worth of vegetable.

Ooi’s company also produces palm heart in other forms such as canned,dried and sweetened with honey, pickled, as a jam and as the baseingredient for spaghetti sauce.

Currently, our products are only being sold at vegetarian shops, organicfood outlets and through direct-selling companies (such as Cosway). But weare hoping to break into the mass Malaysian market very soon.

So what are the benefits of eating palm heart? It is healthy, high inVitamin E, which is said to be an anti-carcinogenic agent; it is cheap andthe cleanest vegetable around as it doesn’t see the light of day untilbrought into sterile environments, and it tastes good. Also, it is perfectfor vegetarians looking for more variety in their diet.