Description of water walnut, what it looks like, where it is found. Calorie content and useful properties. Harmful use. How they eat chilim, what dishes are made from it. Interesting facts about the floating flyer. The benefits of water nuts are preserved after heat treatment.
Useful properties of chilim
For medicinal purposes, plant stems, leaves and flowers are used. The floating bogeyman can be harvested during flowering and fruiting from the surface of water bodies or grown in your own aquarium.
Useful properties of water walnut:
- Mild diuretic and pronounced diaphoretic action, eliminates edema and accelerates lymph drainage;
- Increases the body's defenses, shortens the rehabilitation process, the field of infectious diseases;
- Suppresses the vital activity of pathogenic bacteria, viruses and some fungi;
- Normalizes the reproductive system in men, increases libido, is used to treat gonorrhea and genital herpes, tonsillitis;
- Eliminates diarrhea and flatulence, but the secretion of bile does not decrease, but rather stimulates;
- Has a pronounced antitumor effect, especially in relation to neoplasms in the intestine;
- Relieves spasms, has an anesthetic effect;
- Increases efficiency and tone of the body;
- Has a sedative effect, eliminates weakness and headaches.
Folk remedies, which include chilim, treat toothache and atherosclerosis.
External application of water walnut, its juice and leaves helps to eliminate itching from insect bites, inflammation of the conjunctiva, and prevent the development of acne.
Contraindications and harm to chilim
The harmful properties of water walnut were practically not revealed. Individual intolerance is possible, but such cases have not been described.
It is not recommended to introduce this product into the diet for children under 3 years of age, pregnant women and lactation. One of the properties of the plant is to increase its tone. Overexcitation negatively affects the work of the whole organism, it is possible to provoke a short-term tone of blood vessels and smooth muscles.
How water walnuts are eaten
A variety of new dishes can be prepared with the fruits of the float. The taste is compared to hazelnuts, to fried chestnuts, even to brown rice.
Consider how chillim is eaten. Peel the nut in the usual way: dry it a little and split the peel, under which there is a dense white pulp with a sweetish aftertaste. Raw fruits are not to everyone's liking. Due to the high content of starch and tannins, the mouth feels tight, like after persimmon. Therefore, heat treatment is preferable.
Dried nuts are ground into flour and added to baked goods.
It is better to clean them before use. If this is done in advance, the pulp will dry out quickly and the taste will noticeably decrease.
Water Nut Recipes
The product can be used as a side dish and for preparing sweet dishes. The taste is combined with spicy spices and the sweetness of honey.
Chillim recipes:
- Puree … 2 cups of kernels are cut into pieces and immersed in boiling milk. There should be enough milk to cover the surface of the nuts. Cook until the flesh is soft. The finished nuts are pounded like mashed potatoes, slightly salted and butter and sugar are added to taste. In the dietary version, they are steamed and the milk is added when pounded. No butter is added to dietary puree.
- Stuffed apples … The nuts are stewed in water almost until tender, and then ground with sugar and cinnamon. The apples are cut into a core, filled with nutmeat, greased with whipped whites on top and placed in the oven on a baking sheet. The temperature for baking is 170-180 ° C. Once the apples are ready, serve. Honey is used as decoration for presentation. You can add a little butter to the nutmeat.
- Pickled chillim … The nuts are peeled, cut in half and the top seed removed. Boil until half cooked. Placed in sterilized jars. The marinade is cooked: for 1 kg of fruit - 8 black peppercorns, 200 g of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of salt and 2 sugar. The vinegar is added before turning off. Spices are laid out in the jars: crushed garlic, pieces of shallots, nutmeg husks, dried ginger, cloves. Take a little spices. In the future, their number is determined by taste.
- Chillim pork … 1-2 pickled nuts are wrapped in salted portions of pork or bacon (salt is not necessary then). To prevent the structure from unfolding, it is fixed with a toothpick. The meat is placed in a baking dish. Prepare the sauce separately: mix tomato sauce with Worcester sauce - 250 ml and 10 ml, stir in brown sugar, boil, stirring constantly so that the sugar does not burn. Pour the sauce over the meat and bake at 180 ° C in the oven for about an hour.
- Chillim cupcake … Nuts are peeled from the shell and left for 1 day to dry out a little. Then it is ground into flour. You need to get a glass of nut flour. Half a glass of fresh fruit is fried and ground into crumbs. Beat 2 eggs with a glass of sugar, add 4 tablespoons of natural unsweetened yogurt, 150 g of melted butter and a little, a handful of vanilla sugar. In a separate container, mix nutmeg powder, a little less than a teaspoon, a teaspoon of baking soda and nut flour. Both compositions are thoroughly mixed to form a liquid, homogeneous dough. For better baking, you can add a little plain flour. Baked in muffin tins at 200 ° C. If the molds are silicone, you do not need to lubricate anything. Metallic ones are coated with sunflower oil. Check by pricking with a toothpick. When the tip of the toothpick is dry, you can take it out. Sprinkle the cooled muffins with powdered sugar and roasted nut crumbs. You can mix the nut flakes with the coconut flakes.
- Chilim with celery … Meat broth is cooked in advance. Pour 400 g of peeled nuts with broth, add a stalk of celery fried in sunflower oil and simmer everything together over low heat until tender. Pour the finished water nut with tomato sauce and knead in mashed potatoes.
- Indian salad … Mix half a glass of mayonnaise with 2 teaspoons of curry. The pickled chillim is washed, cut into small pieces, mixed with green peas, grated almonds and chopped green onions. Season with mayonnaise with curry and add black pepper powder if needed. Proportions of salad: 200 g of chillim and onions, 2 times more green peas, about 100 g of almonds. You can experiment with the amount of ingredients.
Water walnut can replace potatoes in soup. You can bake it like potatoes in a fire. Only a preliminary incision should be made in the shell. The pulp of the fruit is juicy, and if you disregard the recommendation, the chillim will "explode" like popcorn.
Interesting facts about water walnut
In the cultural layer of the X-XII century, stocks of nuts were discovered, according to which it becomes clear that this product was of great importance for the Slavs. But the first to appreciate the taste were primitive people: the seeds and particles of the peel were found in a layer dated to the Tertiary period.
Rogulnik grows in slow-flowing rivers or stagnant bodies of water with a muddy bottom. In humid conditions, in a layer of silt, where the seeds fall, breaking away from the petioles, they retain their germination and useful properties for 10-12 years.
The nut from which the sprout hatches remains at the end of the stem. Its plant uses it as an anchor to attach to the ground. Then it releases several roots and absorbs nutrients from the soil. When the water level rises, the chilim floats and, migrating, "looks for" a new place for rooting. Sometimes the thickets in the underground part are so dense that a fish pestilence begins.
The plant is sensitive to changes in temperature and water composition. Attempts to grow waternuts in an aquarium have been crowned with success only recently, when computer programs "learned" how to maintain a microclimate.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Volga delta, chilim grew in abundance, and closer to the Moscow province it began to die out. Later, when times fell, the water nut was destroyed almost everywhere. It was used for baking bread, for medicinal purposes - the plant literally saved people from death in the war and post-war years. By the middle of the twentieth century, it was listed in the Red Book. And by 2008, the roguelite had again spread throughout Russia, and it was deleted from the list of rare plants.
Despite the fact that all types of chilim are collected in one family, externally, the plants differ significantly. A total of 30 types of floating flyworm are described, differing in size and number of horns. For example, in a water nut growing in Siberia, there are 6 horns and the distance between them reaches 6 cm. And in the Maksimovich walnut, the flowers are tiny, and the fruits are hornless. All species can live in the same reservoir, pollinate by the same bees, but the traits do not mix.
The small fruits of the Maksimovich walnut spread when they break off and float with the flow. But the large heavy ones sink and sink into the silt. They are carried by animals that wade across rivers. It is for distribution that horns are needed - they attach the plant to the hairs. When the number of ungulates decreases, its range of distribution narrows.
If in the USSR they tried to grow the plant artificially, then in Australia it was ruthlessly destroyed. It almost completely filled fresh water bodies, the stable climate suited it so much, so the locals began to destroy it. Herbivorous fish were introduced into the country, and it remains to be seen how their presence will affect the underwater world of this continent.
In China, floating flyer is grown artificially, it is pickled, potions are made from the extract, which are then successfully exported.
Now souvenirs are made from chilim boxes, coated with varnish, and used for decorative purposes to decorate living quarters.
In India, water walnut is still used as food and is also used for feeding pigs.
What a water nut looks like - watch the video:
If you managed to collect ripe nuts, you should definitely cook some dish from them. This supplement will help diversify your diet. In addition, this product is not only tasty, but also healthy.
