My Lamma Forums

[Guy Mlller]

What are these? Fruit or Nut?
Bought them in the village today. Are they supposed to be cooked?
Inside is a fleshy white nut like stuff.

[Ronald McBobsy]

They're called tug-nuts and dirty boys find them in their pants.[/code]

[Pierre]

I used to buy a lot of stuff which I did not know what it was, too. Had to stop--the missus kept kicking the crap out of me, said I was a moron.Go figure.

[Guy Mlller]

[Samson]

Uncle Guy, the food in question is called "Ling Gok" in Cantonese, I think it's a seasonal food for Mid-Autumn Festival... or maybe it's some other Chinese festival around this time of the year.

Having said all that, I'm unsure if it's a fruit or nut...

[Guy Mlller]

Do you know if it is eaten raw or if it is to be cooked?
Tasted it raw & it did not taste too exciting - but remember going to a Mid-Autumn festival buffet several years ago & my memory was that it tasted good.

[Alan]

From Cook's Thesaurus: Exotic Tropical Fruit :
water caltrop = horned water chestnut = Jesuit nut = ling kio = ling chio = ling kok = ling jiao Latin: Trapa bicornis
Notes: This black nut bears an unmistakable resemblance to a bull's head. Each one is about two inches across, and has a very hard shell. After you shell water caltrops, you'll need to steam or boil them before you can eat them as they contain harmful toxins in their raw state. Or you can skip eating them altogether, and just use them to make jewelry.

And a few other references on cooking sites:
~~~~~~~~~~~
You can cook them in the shell or peel them first. Either way is fine but they'll need to be shelled before eating. They are not as sweet or crunchy as common water chestnuts, many find them tasteless on their own so they're good to chop and add to dishes much the same way as common water chestnuts are used. Many Asians boil or steam them in the shell as a snack. You can also roast them and they taste quite similar to chestnuts.

Boil or steam them for at least one hour before eating, otherwise they contain harmful toxins.
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The real name of "Ram Horn Nut" should be Water caltrops. In Mandarin, it's called "Ling Jiao"; in Cantonese, it's called "Ling Gok". It also has a nickname "Peanut in Water". It's a plant grows in water. The leaves float on the water but usually the fruits "droop" in the water. So when you go picking water caltrops, you have to turn the plant upside down to find the fruits. In Taiwan, there is "Water Caltrops Festival", and here is a website introducing the activities.

And, here is another website including discussion on Water caltrops: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/asianveg/msg101212459785.html But It stated that Water Caltrops are toxic if they are eaten raw -- I doubt it -- as I know that this fruit can be eaten raw or cooked, and some birds eat it also, I don't think that those birds can cook! In Chinese herbal therapy, it is believed that Water Caltrops can help to cure cancer and are anti-toxic. That's why I doubt that saying in that website.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And this hilarious story:
Animal rights activists are expressing outrage after October shoppers reported boxes of Manchurian miniature water buffalo horns for sale in Chinatown. Most biologists believe the Manchurian water buffalo to be extinct. The discovery of hndreds of horns in the market place has caught the attention of natural history researcher Sandy Hull. Hull plans to be in town Friday to launch a full-scale investigation into the sources of the horns and the slaughter of the Manchurian miniature buffalo.

The Manchurian miniature water buffalo is described in detail in Animal Curiosities of the Orient by Lady Jay Walken-Seymour, pub. 1881. Walken-Seymour tells of the Emperor Hi Lee Sung, who kept for 47 years in his private garden a little old buffalo he'd inherited from his grandmother, the dowager conservationist Ho Lee Kau.

Hull admits to being baffled about the source of horns found in Chinatown. His researchers have not ruled out the possibility that a Manchurian immigrant family with a tradition of planning ahead brought a few buffalo with them in the nineteenth century and have been breeding them in secret ever since.

[Lamma-Gung]

According to my local sources, Ling Gok ("horn") is a nut. In all my years in HK, I've never seen this nut till this morning at breakfast when a few of them were lying in an empty mooncake tin in the restaurant and I got one.

It's simply the meanest-looking nut I've ever seen and I wonder what its symbolic association with Mid-autumn actually is? I've shot it in Macro mode, it looks like something out of AvP - Alien vs. Predator...

[Guy Mlller]

Thank you - very informative - shall cook them today

[Blazenski]

I think you have been duped by these false stories of fruits and nuts. These are the horns of the Pygmy Wildebeeste. Great herds of these tiny beasts once roamed the hills of Lamma, but overhunting has reduced them to near extinction. Now the hunters cover up this despicable slaughter by naming them "horned water chestnuts" to get the eco-lobby off their backs.

[Blazenski]

Oops - just read Alan's "hilarious story" so sorry for the repetition. Can people really be so dumb?

[Alan]

[Lamma-Gung]

Wow, that's very interesting info, Alan. After a decade on the Internet, it still amazes me sometimes what kind of fascinating info you can find about something I knew NOTHING about just two days ago. A festival! Flutes! Wine!

I wonder if Guy could enlighten us on the culinary possibilities of Ling Goks, having cooked them yesterday?

[Pierre]

I read somewhere on my internet information superfreeway modem (in night mode) that those Ling Gok things also symbolize being "drunk with power".

[Lamma-Gung]

Pierre,

That's the funniest thing I've heard from you so far.

YES, DRUNK WITH POWER !!!

Brouhahahahahahahah! (demoniacal laughter)

Who are you, little girlieman, to try to stand up to the awesome power of the widely feared, high'n'mighty LG-with-an-exclamation-mark!

I should use your quite accurate description as a new Underblurb for my new Avatar! Thank you for starting me off on another power trip, oh meek, moribund mortal!

Unfortunately, these highly enjoyable power trips usually don't last very long, as Lamma-Poh has her secret means and ways to bring me back down to reality with a big THUMP!

[Alan]

[Lamma-Gung]

Oh, Alan, Fountain Of Wisdom & Knowledge - who's "really good with a search engine to tease out arcane facts":

How do I make wine from my Horned Water Chestnuts? I've purchased some today at only $5 per catty at the vegi & fruits hawker besides the Deli.

I've already experimented with eating them raw (hard & bitter-tasting) and boiling them for one hour:
quite yummy, very much like boiled regular chestnuts but with a very nutty flavour, most suitable for a Nutty Site Admin who's DRUNK WITH POWER!.

But peeling the cooked nuts is really tough and requires proper chopper technique, i.e. smashing them with the blunt edge of the chopper at the base of the horn and then seeing the white nut (filling the entire inside, including the "horns") zoom at high speed through the kitchen, bouncing off the walls...

Would somebody enlighten me with a wine-making recipe, so I can get really DRUNK WITH POWER!

[Alan]

I suspect the wine is just some spirits with the nuts steeped in it.

I would not eat them raw. According to Worms and Human Disease, they may contain cysts of flukes:
The xiphidocercous cercariae ... encyst on the roots or fruits of various freshwater plants, such as the water caltrop (Trapa bicornis and T.natans ) or water chestnut (Eliocharis tuberosa), to give an encysted metacercarial stage.

When ingested on edible plants, the metacercariae excyst in the duodenum and the young flukes take 3–4 months to mature in the ileum. The adult worms can produce up to 28,000 eggs/24h but live for only about 6–12 months in humans.

Water vegetables need to be carefully peeled and washed. Boiling for 1–2 min is sufficient to kill the metacercarial cysts.

The symptoms are pretty disgusting, but not wanting to score a yellow card, I'll leave you to look it up.

[Guy Mlller]

Oh Dear.

[Lamma-Gung]

NOW you tell me, AFTER conducting my culinary experiments! I thought a bit of poison was all I had to fear when trying them raw!

Well, "metacercarial cysts in my ileum" sounds like another interesting experiment, all in the name of science. I'll keep you all updated on its progress (if any). My tummy is already grumbling a bit right now...