The ancient art of roasting agave | Hacker News Reader

The ancient art of roasting agave

atlasobscura.com

99 pointsNoRagrets21 comments

Imagine the earth as distributed, massively parallel operating systems. Physical, chemical and biological conditions as $environment and available system calls. Seeds could be apps that can survive on certain hardware.

I learnt from a billion agave[1] project that in Chile where it touches 55 degree centigrade, they are the most resilient apps that thrive. In peak draughts, they're reviving techniques of fermenting the leaves as a fodder replacement. Tequila, I hear is mostly agave.

In native Karnataka, India they use the fibres for ropes, the tips as needles, the dehydrated leaves as roof tiles. A large suit manufacturer until recently would buy off local agave for very strong and lasting fabric. I learnt that a hammock weaved from the fibre would easily last 10 years in sun and rain.

Amazed to learn of the edible properties!

[1] https://regenerationinternational.org/2024/06/17/the-billion...

You can see ancient agave roasting pits in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, if you know where to look. Also, if you've ever run over an agave with a lawnmower while wearing shorts you'll soon experience a burning sensation on your legs, so props to folks that handle the leaves without issues...

Fascinating! Agave looks a lot like Aloe, but apparently they're not closely related. I wouldn't expect looking at an Agave for it to be a skin irritant.

I helped my mom transplant a large agave plant and got in contact with a considerable amount of sap in the process — it's extremely uncomfortable and it took probably 3 months for the resulting rash to go away on my inner arms.

The irritation comes from raphides [0], which are sharp calcium oxalate crystals that get into your skin. Definitely something to avoid if you can! I have no idea how folks work with bare skin around those plants...

Interestingly, pineapples and kiwis have raphides in them as well, so if your mouth feels cut up after eating some, that is why.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphide

The “cut up” feeling that can occur after eating kiwi or pineapple is more likely to be caused by the natural proteases present in the raw fruit (actinidain and bromelain, respectively) as the “cut up” feeling generally does not occur in cooked or canned fruit due to denaturing of the protein proteases. Raphides, which are sharp, insoluble calcium oxalate crystals, are generally not destroyed by boiling (as stated in your link) as so would still be present in the cooked fruit, suggesting that they are unlikely to be responsible for the “cut up” sensation.

The manual construction of the horno oven for roasting agave for mezcal is a lovely piece of traditional labour, long may it continue. The workers could do with some respiratory protection, though, looks smokey.

https://youtu.be/IEEsu6PFGF0

there is no horno oven. Horno means oven in Spanish. It's like saying "salsa sauce".

When a common word from another language is borrowed into English, it tends to take on a more specific meaning. Most native English speakers wouldn't use "salsa" to describe any other sauce. Horno oven sounds perfectly reasonable in English to specifically describe an earth oven in that style, not the common household appliance.

EDIT: Probably the reason this happens is that most English speakers wouldn't be familiar with the foreign word, so the speaker uses it as a modifier to the standard English word. The listener doesn't need to know anything specific about the foreign word in that case and can just assume it's a type of the common item.

Then again people say things like VIN number and that's not due to another language we can be dumb for no reason too.

But also in Canada some uni-lingual English people may say "pont bridge" not knowing pont is bridge in French. Maybe uni-lingual French say the same?

I think the acronym thing is related but a separate phenomenon. My guess would be that speakers intuitively think the acronym isn't easily understandable so they add an extra word to clarify it, intentionally or unintentionally duplicating one of the actual words in the acronym.

"pont bridge" sounds like the exact phenomenon though. Does it have a more specific meaning that "bridge"?

I agree with the salsa-sauce.

But why horno-oven? Horno is oven in Spanish and just in one video someone mistranslated horno to "earth oven".

All the people besides all those 1.5k that saw the video will use the "horno" as "oven".

> mistranslated horno to "earth oven"

My argument is that it's not a mistranslation. In Spanish, "horno" means any kind of oven. In English, it means specifically an earth oven because when English speakers started using the word, they always used it to mean that kind of oven.

A sibling comment mentioned chai tea. It's the same phenomenon. Chai means any tea in its original language, but in English it means a specific variety and preparation of tea.

English is a bastardized language and has a lot of words borrowed from other languages. But once they're borrowed, they're English words and have their own meaning separate from their original loanword.

> In English, it means specifically an earth oven because when English speakers started using the word, they always used it to mean that kind of oven.

Sorry, I was not aware of this. Can you point me to another source, besides this video, that mentions the usage of "horno" as an earth oven?

Google "horno oven" and you'll find plenty of English references to earth ovens.

Or “chai tea”.

My favorite is American restaurant menus describing a "French Dip" as "with au jus sauce" :)

That's a meme-worthy mini-rant in Spider-Man: Across The Spider Verse https://youtu.be/0jTN9YqyXOU?si=JjvNEy0cgj81ksRp&t=71

On a more serious bit - the word origin of each is interesting. The word used depended on how it got to its destination - by land or by sea.

https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...

If it was shipped over land across the Silk Road, its name stems from 'cha' (茶). However, if it was shipped from the coast, the dialect spoken there pronounced 茶 as 'te'.

Curious as to why the title of this post was changed. The process of preservation here is just as much - if not more - important to the article than the actual practice.

There is a limit on the size of titles on HN, and I cannot imaging the original title would fit that limit. Thus, someone made a choice on what to remove.

That would make sense. I saw it initially on the home page with the listed headline, and then saw it changed. I would think title length would be validated on submission.

Really interesting to see an article on agave roasting without the context of an artisinal mescaleiro.

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