Sago, a resourceful plant

Resourceful plant

By LIZ PRICE

THE STAR Weekend
15 November 2008

The sago palm is known as the Tree of a Thousand Uses because, like the coconut tree, virtually every part of it can be used.

Eating frogspawn for dessert was a common dish when I was growing up in England. It wasn’t really frogs’ eggs that my mother was feeding me, of course, but sago.
Cooked with milk and sugar, and eaten with a dollop of jam on top, sago was frequently nicknamed frogspawn due to its texture and resemblance to frog’s eggs. It resembles tapioca pudding which had a smoother texture, but that’s from cassava.

Getting it ready: The preparation to process sago happens right on the river banks.

In Malaysia, sago dishes are commonly eaten with gula melaka. However other societies use sago as a staple food item instead of rice or potato. It forms a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and Maluku (the Moluccas). The sago plant has dozens of uses, as I was able to see for myself when I was in Maluku.
The islands of Maluku in Indonesia were originally known at The Spice Islands, Today many spices are still grown there.
Although not a spice, sago is an important commodity in Maluku.
Sago is basically a powdery starch made from the processed pith found inside the trunks of the sago palms (Metroxylon spp.). These palms grow alongside rivers and in freshwater swamps. The sago palms grow all over South-East Asia, and are used as staple foods in places where there is insufficient rain to grow wet rice.
During my stay on Seram island, I was able to see the process of sago preparation right on the river banks. The tall palm trees grow at a rate of up to 1.5m per year. The palm builds up a store of starch during its life span of about 15 years and attains the maximum amount of starch just before the inflorescence opens. The tree will die after flowering.
When the palm is judged to be mature, men will cut it down and divide the stem into several lengths. Each piece is split in half lengthwise, and used as a container into which the pith containing the dry starch is put. Buckets of water are hoisted from the river and added to the pith, then the mixture is pounded and washed in order to free the flour from the fibres.

Sago is a major staple food at Seram Island.

Pieces of sago bark are used as a filter although nowadays they also use manmade materials.
When the slurry is ready, it is allowed to flow down a sloping ramp into a goti or container made from another length of the palm trunk. This wet sediment will form the sago flour. Round-shaped baskets are made from sago leaves, held together by strings made from sago fibres. The wet sago is put into these baskets and transported from the river. The purified starch is then dried and preserved as flour.
Just two men work on one palm tree, one pounding and the other washing. It takes about seven days to extract the flour from one palm. One tree can produce 400-600 kg of wet sago flour, which is 80% starch, 16% water and 4% nitrogen.
The waste fibres left over from the washing process are dumped on the ground, forming a soggy carpet. However, these fibres are still rich in protein and can be fed to pigs and chickens, and can also be used to make strings.
The prepared sago flour can be preserved in the form of baked biscuits. During my stay in Maluku, I saw various types of biscuit. Some tasted OK whereas others resembled chewing a small wad of compacted sawdust!
The “toasted bricks” in the market caught my eye but I never tried them. They looked like hollow, extremely thick slices of bread. No doubt they are meant to be eaten with a sauce. The slices of toast made from sago were just about edible on their own. Sago flour is nearly pure carbohydrate and has very little protein, vitamins, or minerals.

Some of the products produced some sago tree.

Papeda is the sago pudding which resembles thick glue and is eaten with fish sauce. It reminded me of the glue we used to make as children for sticking papers in scrapbooks! Sago starch is also used in making bread and noodles. Pearl sago is the same starch mixed again into a paste and sieved through a mesh of various sizes. The finished sago pearls have a long shelf life.
Sago is also used in the textile and pharmaceutical industries, especially as a thickener. For textiles, it is used to treat fibres to make them easier to machine.
The sago palm is like the coconut palm, in that nothing is wasted. Traditional Maluku houses are 90% made from sago palms. The roof is made from the leaves which resemble attap, but is more durable than the nipah commonly used in Malaysia. The walls are made from the fronds.
The palm parts can even be useful inside the house – the midribs for making brooms and baskets, and the barks woven into mats. So sago certainly lives up to its nickname of the “Tree of a Thousand Uses”.

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© Liz Price

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