Palm heart

Palm heart - also called heart of palm, palmito or swamp cabbage. It’s harvested from the inner core and growing bud of certain palm trees. The outside woody bits are stripped away leaving the tender centre - which has a texture like cooked asparagus. It’s expensive as the minute you harvest the palm heart you kill the tree and they take many years to grow. There is now a cultivated palm (Peach Palm) that has as many as 40 stems and so they can be harvested without killing the palm - which has also lowered the price. Grown commercially in Brazil, Ecuador, Costa Rica.