Peté

Parkia speciosa (Sumatra, petai). The beans of this plant, with the pod and skin removed, are packed in brine and sold by Conimex under the name Peteh Asin; they look rather like broad beans, shelled. ‘Asin’ means ‘salty’, which is not really an accurate description; the flavour is bitter and at the same time nutty—‘remotely suggesting garlic’, as Burkill puts it. In the tropics you buy fresh peté in pods, up to half a metre long. A favourite way to cook young ones is to top and tail the pod, trim off the stringy edges, and slice the pod very thin with the beans still in it. Crisp-fry the pod, and the beans remain soft in the middle of the slices. Peté is even more delicious mixed with tempe and hot sambal, but I doubt if this would be to the taste of most Europeans. More commonly, fresh peté is taken out of the pod and the skin peeled off each bean with a sharp knife before cooking.