Hab El Aziz

"Hab El Aziz"  or Cyperus Esculentus

If you traveled through TANTA in Egypt by train, car or otherwise you probably remember buying or seeing a small coloured reeds basket filled with a little fruit resembling dried raisins.

Sweets on display-Tanta

It is called “Hab El Aziz حب العزيز” and was sold together with “Homosia حمصيه” and “Semsemia سمسميه” it is commonly found during the Moulid of :"El-Sayyed El-Baddawi" everywhere in Tanta.

Cyperus Esculentus (also called chufa sedge, nut grass, yellow nut sedge, tiger nut sedge, or earth almond) is a crop of the sedge family widespread across much of the world. It is native to most of the Western Hemisphere as well as southern Europe, Africa, Madagascar, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. It has become naturalized in many other regions, including Ukraine, China, Hawaii, Indochina, New Guinea, Java, New South Wales and various oceanic islands.

Cyperus esculentus can be found wild, as a weed, or as a crop. There is evidence for its cultivation in Egypt since the sixth millennium BC, and for several centuries in Southern Europe. In Spain, C. esculentus is cultivated for its edible tubers, called earth almonds or tiger nuts. However, in most other countries, C. esculentus is considered a weed.

HISTORY

Prehistoric tools with traces of C. esculentus tuber starch granules have been recovered from the early archaic period in North America, from about 9,000 years ago, at the Sandy Hill excavation site at the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation in Mashantucket, Connecticut. The tubers are believed to have been a source of food for those Paleo-Indians.

Dr. Zohary and Dr. Hopf estimate that C. esculentus "ranks among the oldest cultivated plants in Ancient Egypt." Although noting that "Chufa was no doubt an important food element in ancient Egypt during dynastic times, its cultivation in ancient times seems to have remained (totally or almost totally) an Egyptian specialty." Its dry tubers have been found in tombs from predynastic times about 6000 years ago. In those times, C. esculentus tubers were consumed either boiled in beer, roasted, or as sweets made of ground tubers with honey. The tubers were also used medicinally, taken orally, as an ointment, or as an enema, and used in fumigants to sweeten the smell of homes or clothing. There are almost no contemporary records of this plant in other parts of the old World.

Besides Egypt, at present C. esculentus is cultivated mainly in Spain, where it is extended for common commercial purposes in mild climate areas. The Arabs introduced the plant, at first in the Valencia region. They are found extensively too in California and were grown by the Paiute in Owens Valley. C. Esculentus is also cultivated in countries like Guatemala, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, USA, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Yemen, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Sudan, South Sudan, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Northern Cameroon and Mali, where they are used primarily as animal feed or uncooked as a side dish, but in Hispanic countries they are used mainly to make horchata, a sweet, milk-like beverage. In Northern Nigeria it is called 'Aya' and it is usually eaten fresh. It is sometimes dried and later rehydrated and eaten. Toasting the nuts makes a snack when sugar coated, it is very popular among the Hausa children of Northern Nigeria, a drink known as 'Kunun Aya' is also made by processing the nuts with dates and later sieved and served chilled.

CHUFA TUBERS

Biology

C. Esculentus is an annual or perennial plant, growing to 90 cm tall, with solitary stems growing from a tuber. The plant is reproduced by seeds, creeping rhizomes, and tubers. The tubers are 0.3 – 1.9 cm in diameter and the colours vary between yellow, brown, and black. One plant can produce several hundred to several thousand tubers during a single growing season. With cool temperatures, the foliage, roots, rhizomes, and basal bulbs die, but the tubers survive and re-sprout the following spring when soil temperatures remain above 6 °C

Use as food

Dried tiger nut has a smooth tender, sweet and nutty taste. It can be consumed raw, roasted, dried, baked or as tiger nut milk or oil.

HORCHATA

Dried tubers sold at the market of Banfora, Burkina Faso. The tubers are edible, with a slightly sweet, nutty flavour, compared to the more bitter-tasting tuber of the related Cyperus rotundus (purple nutsedge). They are quite hard and are generally soaked in water before they can be eaten, thus making them much softer and giving them a better texture. They are a popular snack in West Africa, where they are known as ncɔkɔn in the languages Bamanankan or Dyula.

They have various uses; in particular, they are used in Spain to make horchata. “Horchata” is a nonalcoholic beverage of milky appearance derived from the tubers of the tiger nut plant mixed with sugar and water. It has a great economic impact in the Valencia region of Spain.

CHUFA

Flour of roasted tiger nut is sometimes added to biscuits and other bakery products as well as in making oil, soap, and starch extracts. It is also used for the production of nougat, jam, beer, and as a flavoring agent in ice cream and in the preparation of kunnu (a local beverage in Nigeria). Kunnu is a non-alcoholic beverage prepared mainly from cereals (such as millet or sorghum) by heating and mixing with spices (dandelion, alligator pepper, ginger, liquorices) and sugar. To make up for the poor nutritional value of kunnu prepared from cereals, tiger nut was found to be a good substitute for cereal grains. Tiger nut oil can be used naturally with salads or for deep-frying. It is considered to be a high quality oil. Tiger nut “milk” has been tried as an alternative source of milk in fermented products, such as yogurt production, and other fermented products common in some African countries and can thus be useful replacing milk in the diet of people intolerant to lactose to a certain extent

KUNNU

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Tiger nuts should be eaten in only moderate amounts at any one time. Ingestion of 300 Gm of the fibrous dehydrated nuts, chewed without being rehydrated has been known to cause rectal impaction.

Use in medicine and cosmetic industry

As a source of oils, the tubers were used in pharmacy under the Latin name bulbuli thrasi beginning no later than the end of 18th century. In medicine tiger nuts are used in the treatment of flatulence, diarrhea, dysentery, debility and indigestion.

Tiger nut oil can be used in the cosmetic industry. As it is antioxidant (because of its high content in vitamin E) it helps slow down the ageing of the body cells. It favours the elasticity of the skin and reduces skin wrinkles.