Home Made Dried Bamboo Shoots

This actually isn’t my recipe (nor much of a recipe at all, more of a narrated process)—it’s my mom’s and it’s definitely not from around these parts, but from Costa Rica! Speaking of that gorgeous Central American country that my parents fell in love with and set roots into during my teen years, I’m very excited and looking forward to the next few weeks/months when my and Adam’s passport renewals come in (we had renewed them late August so they should be getting here any day now, the kids got theirs way earlier) because we’ll begin traveling down there regularly (likely Christmas break, Midwinter break, Spring break, and Summer break!) We had really been waiting for when the kids were old enough to travel, but then coronatine hit and our plans got pushed back.

Aside from the fact that I really need to get down there because I got eminent domain’d (the government is expanding their two-lane highway which requires about 15 meters into the farm I’ll be managing), we’re also planning on building our vacation home there, which is an exciting venture all on its own. It’ll be relatively simple, since my dad has a few container houses ready to be dropped off that just needs foundation and hookups and we will likely be staying half the time at the seaside Airbnb/small hotel they and my sister built in the port of Punta Renas anyway (and the other half on the main farm’s entrance cottage). Me and my sister spent many a childhood vacations down there, chasing iguanas and geckos, pulling fruits right off trees and shoving them (especially mangos) down our pie-hole, lasso-ing scorpions, grabbing snakes out of ovens with chopsticks, horseback riding, capturing tarantulas the size of our hands, and watching super charged fireflies light up the dark forest. But I have to admit beyond bringing my children to experience a piece of my precious memories, I’m probably most excited about building a tropical food forest down there (a counterpart to my temperate food forest up here), since it really is a veritable Garden of Eden—plants grow quick, healthy, and strong. Which brings me to the origin of this particular “recipe”.

My parents of course had a head start all these years and have planted so many fruits and vegetables (and my dad often sends me photos of his hauls much to my extreme envy). Among all the other stuff, they cultivated a grove of bamboo in the back of the main farm where this recipe is from. Bamboo is really an amazing plant, both from a sustainability point of view (they sequester carbon at an alarmingly fast rate due to the speed of their growth, are easy and hardy, can be used to create furniture, charcoal/biochar) and culinary point of view (their leaves are used to wrap and steam glutinous rice to impart a sublime flavor, you can roast/grill pork and rice by stuffing them into the segments, delicious bamboo shoots). It is culturally significant and is deeply ingrained in Asian culture. Aside from using bamboo for furniture building, my parents have also been harvesting the delicious shoots, at their peak tenderness using a really cool method:

Instead of allowing the shoots to go underground, what they have done is surround the bamboo clumps with a wooden raised bed, and filled it with wood shavings from their teak tree thinnings (the main crop they grow). What this does is instead of having to dig into the soil to harvest them, the shoots grow above ground in the shavings, making it easy to see when there are available shoots to harvest by feeling around (they immediately start getting bitter when they reach sunlight, so keeping them in the dark is important) and to harvest, since there is very little digging involved. It is said they are more tender because they don’t have to work as hard pushing through soil.

Then the shoots are then peeled and boiled in salt water (to remove the bitterness, astringency, and toxic qualities–when consumed raw, bamboo shoots produce cyanide in the gut but is harmless once cooked), sliced, and then set out to dry and then stored for long term use. Delicate, tender, and fragrant, these are the best dried bamboo shoots I have ever eaten (and quite frankly, ruined me for store bought which are often tough and need to be trimmed.) I reconstitute them in either hot water or hot dashi for soups, salads, noodles, stir fries, and of course RAMEN. I haven’t tried it yet but I imagine it would be delicious marinated in chili oil. Alas, my mom only brought back so much, but you can bet when we go I will be working on harvesting and processing them to bring back!

I hope this mouthwatering ingredient is just a small snapshot of all the good and fun things to come!