These are dry roasted Palawan cashews with their skins. Isn’t that cool? Well, at least I think it’s cool. 
So much of the kasoy you purchase in the groceries and markets are now imported from Vietnam and other parts of Indochina. While the imported nuts are good, it bothers me that we grow them in abundance in Palawan and we somehow can’t compete price wise with the imports. At any rate, I was trolling though Divisoria last week when an old lady approached with a bilao (flat basket) of several flavors of recently roasted cashews. She had plain, salted, adobo, fried, and dry roasted with skins still on. She generously offered free tastes and they were in fact newly cooked so I bought little glasses (her measuring tool) full of the cashews. Yum. I was particularly thrilled to find the dry roasted ones with skins on as I believe they are an indication that they are local rather than the factory processed ones brought in from Vietnam. At any rate, they were really good and if I didn’t eat them all while shopping I would have made some trail mix with some fresh dried mangoes that I also have in the pantry…
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I love the distinct taste and the light woody flavor of the local variety. Once you start eating it you cant stop. Sometimes i even eat the skin because i get too tired peeling it. Hay naku Marketman i guess ill be goin to Divisoria and look for the lady selling kasuy there. Nainggit na naman ako!! :)
When I went to Puerto Princessa, the markets have great big bags of cashews, roasted with salt or unsalted. For less than P100 you can get a kilo of roasted cashews, which is a steal since in the malls, 100 g of roasted nuts costs P50 to P70 if not more.
Bittersweet, I love the fact that we have such great products yet I’m stuck here craving for such goodies. :(
You keep up with these posts Marketman and I just might buy a plane ticket to go back home.
Interestingly, the skin of a raw cashew contains poisonous oils that are burned off during roasting. The smoke produced during the process is still poisonous though. We used to make sure the wind is blowing in the right direction away from the chicken coops when we roast them because we were told by local farmers that the smoke is noxious enough to kill poultry. Not sure how the fumes affect humans if at all. Maybe we should be looking at the medical files of the kasuy tindera.
Roasted cashew nuts with balat (skin) are uniquely from Antipolo. These delicious nuts are available all-year round in
the Pasalubong market beside the Antipolo cathedral. A great portion of a barrio in Antipolo known as Bosoboso is planted to thousands of old cashew trees. Nuts are picked in the summer months. I suspect that the lady kasoy peddler in Divisoria is from Antipolo! Even the adobong kasoy was first introduced in this hilly town.
I have been to Palawan market, nowhere did I find roasted kasoy with the skin. Bataan is also a major producer of local cashew nuts, and their kasoy nuts is likewise sold without the skin.
Antipolo supplies the cashew nuts requirements of a major ice cream maker and a well-known bakeshop chain.
Vicky, thanks for that…I suppose it is very well possible that the kasoy are from Antipolo… what a revelation for me! However, it seems the bulk of Philippine kasoy produced (up to 90% of the 2.6 million fruit bearing trees in the archipelago as of the mid-90’s) comes from the province of Palawan. Other major production areas include Ilocos, Central Luzon, Northern Mindanao and Western Visayas. But at any rate, thanks so much for pointing this out…I learn something every day!
More specifically, I believe much of the cashew nuts coming from Palawan are from Cuyo, a group of islands comprising a town of Palawan located between Panay and Palawan, which is also a major source of dried fish.
ayoko ng kaasoy
i remember when we were young, we will pick our kasoys from the tree. my dad will juice the yellow part(he juices everything anyway) and we will get the seeds and then some dayami(dried grass works too.) We will light the grass and put the seeds on top of it. you would be amazed how flammable the seeds are.
when it burns out, we enjoy the best cashews ever!
erleen, that sounds so natural, so good… you are the first person I have heard from that drank the juice from the pulp…what did it taste like?
he juices it the same way you juice your santol…he rolls the yellow part like a lemon then slices it in half, squeezes it(though no juice seems to come out of it) then throws the whole lot in, together with ice and sugar.
looks a bit like guyabano juice but is sweet and tastes the same as the fruit smells =)
hi mm! have you tried vacuum processed whole cashew nuts from house of nuts? yummy!
roasted cashew nuts with the skin on are a delicacy of cuyo, palawan – my hometown. these are usually ordered and not bought in markets. those found in the mainland of palawan maybe bigger but the ones from cuyo tastes better. my husband’s officemates attest to that.