Sure, it looks innocuous. But here's a hint: The cashew wins. Cachaça, like many things, has the ability to switch my mind into what I'd like to call "curiosity mode." Not long ago, I found myself in a small suburb of Rio de Janeiro with a shot of the sugar-based Brazilian spirit, a bowl of sea salt, and slices of fresh cashew fruit laid out on the bar. Cashew fruit has a faint, pear-like taste and a nice, meaty texture. The nut that is so common here actually is attached to the bottom of the fruit.
The cashews that you and I know go through an initial roast to remove them from their casing, so I was interested to know what a truly raw cashew was like. But as I picked up the knife next to the cashew fruit and cut open the nut, a hush fell over the room. "Don't let that touch your skin. It will burn you," warned my mother-in-law, in Portuguese. "Oh, yeah?" I wondered back, somewhat arrogantly, in English. I rubbed the wet nut casing on my forearm. So far, so good. No burning, no pain, no nothing. I popped the nut in my mouth, and my mother-in-law leaned over and said something in Portuguese to my wife. A rough English translation would be, "I can't believe you married this American fool." After two days, I was convinced that my pale skin and lack of melatonin was to thank, stepping in and protecting me from the cashew. And then, as warned, a cashew-induced rash bubbled its way through the skin of my forearm like a witches' brew. It burned, bad, and it spread, itching worse than the case of poison ivy I came down with after a naked Appalachian marathon, which itself was the result of moonshine-induced brazenness that was, now that I think about it, not too different from my cachaça-induced "curiosity."
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