Somebody brought in a bag of these the other day and I’d never seen them before so I had somebody write down the name. If I’m summarizing correctly, this may be a kind of olive, or related to olives. What I know is that it was really bitter and sour, the taste of bitter fruits that make your mouth pucker or what the Japanese call shibui (astringent). That explains the bag of chili-laced sugar the ma-kok are sold with (although this also accompanies sweet fruits as well; pineapples, sour mango, various indigenous “apples,” etc.)
I have to be careful to record all of the rare stuff I encounter here because I may never see some of them again.
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
I looked up the medicinal use for this plant. I hope you don’t have diarrhea, eye inflammation or as dad puts it, “lower quadrant problems.”
Brave to taste it. I rather liked the chili-laced sugar with those huge crunchy guavas.
we also have an idiom related to Ma-Kok…
it is “Ma-kok saam ta kra pa mai thook”
“direct translation = throwing all three baskets of ma-kok on you , not even a single nut can hit you”
literary meaning “if somebody is described as “Ma-kok saam ta kra pa mai thook” he/she is having a real dam* skill in telling a lie, even nobody can catch the truth”
i think u can be hooked easily with this ma-kok! 😛
Interesting! Thanks for that!
LOLZ @ “Lower quadrant problems.”
They do look like olives. Have you ever eaten a raw olive (elsewhere)? They ARE VERY BITTER.
I’m fond of making Indian (from India, not native American) “sun pickle.” I wonder how olives would work. Hmmm… I think I’d want to try that out…