One of the great joys of being a devoted “foodie” is that while exploring remarkable new fruits, vegetables, grains, recipes and tastes, one is bound to discover healthy alternatives to the highly-processed fare central to the typical Western diet.
In the case of sweeteners, most of us know that consuming too much cane sugar can lead to negative health effects. This is true of maple syrup as well, which is hard for me as someone who loves Ancaster’s beautiful (and irresistibly delicious) maple tree inheritance to admit.
One cane sugar alternative I was happy to try is agave. Frankly, I love the story of this plant as much as I love its exquisite taste. In Mexico, where much of our hemisphere’s agave is produced, agave is often called “the plant of the thousand wonders.” It’s a phrase that originates deep in the pre-Columbian past.
To anyone strolling through the forests of green fronds on an agave farm, one of these wonders is that agave is edible at all. With its huge piña core and jagged green thistles, it looks like a porcupine that just went supernova. It’s clearly a plant that must be handled with care and respect.
As the Maya first discovered, agave is the ultimate sustainable plant, and one that is ideal for arid regions. Agave is hardy and incredibly efficient. It sips water, gulps carbon dioxide and produces extraordinary amounts of sweetener and cellulose.
It is such an optimal fit for dry lands that one African country has established a Ministry of Agave. Domestic nectar specialists in the department say no Tanzanian farmer has had a disappointing agave crop in decades.
Agave won’t fit anyone’s definition of a fast food. Cultivating the plant requires time, patience and love. It takes seven years from seeding to harvest. Two or three years after the agave is planted, it starts to grow baby agave plants around it. These are rosettes, or circular arrangements of leaves, and they will flower only once.
With care, the beauty of the blossom is refined into the sweet taste of agave syrup. Keeping the natural chemical structure of the agave is important to preserve the plant’s natural gift, a rich panoply of nutrients. Using steam and pressure, the piña is transformed into a nutrient-rich organic sweetener. When this process is done right, the syrup will be low-glycemic and retain high levels of amino acids, along with saponins and fructans that may boost immunity.
Out in the field, where rows of prickly green crowns taper to the austere brown hills beyond, harvest is done by hand, using a sharp tool called a “coa.” The coa allows the farmers to cut through the sharp protective fronds and remove each ripened piña.
In the small Mexican villages where agave has been central to prosperity and community life for generations, farmers readily share the nickname they have for the coa: “the tongue of the mother-in-law” — because, they laugh, it can cut from any angle.
