I had my first and best ever Jackfruit curry in Kerala in India a few years ago, it had been homemade especially for my friend Blanche and she graciously shared it with me. On a shopping trip to Brick Lane this week one of my favourite shops Taj Stores’s window display featured a pyramid of tinned Jackfruit as their special offer. It’s been on my to-do list to tackle a Jackfruit curry ever since trying one in India, so it seemed like fate but as I picked up tin I spotted small fresh fruit in the green grocer’s section. I sought the advice of the helpful assistant. He recommended the tin or the prepared boxes of yellow pod-like flesh from the bigger fruits that were on the counter in front of him in plastic boxes. He said preparing the fresh fruit was sticky and unpleasant and people just didn’t bother. In the spirit of sharing my love of a food challenge, I bought both and I had quite an adventure with the whole fruit.
Cutting it down the centre it immediately starting to ooze white latex like fluid, on first touch it stuck to my finger and formed strings attaching me to the fruit! I battled on bravely and removed the peel with a sharp knife, by the time I’d done this and cut the fruit into cubes my knife was encased in a latex cocoon. The rash cook I am, I didn’t do my research fully or I would have seen the good advice in another blog advising covering your hands and your knife with cooking oil first. It took five handwashes to remove the sticky layer. On researching it seems the Jackfruit is desirable at two stages; when smaller and unripe for savoury dishes, like the one I bought, or ripe and very large when the fruit can be eaten raw once expertly extracted from its rubber prison. Most dissection advice was for the latter and the recipes I found for the smaller unripe savoury version recommended using the tinned product. I will do this next time and report back to you whether the convenience of the tinned version compromises the flavour in any way.
After peeling I kept and cooked the entire inside including the large seeds, a total yield of 650 gms of fruit. When you prepare the larger ripe fruit it recommends you extract the seeds, they can be cooked separately (boiled or roasted like chestnuts) and eaten but I couldn’t find any advice about cooking the savoury version so I left them in place and cut them up. The husk around the side was a little chewy in the final curry but it would have been very fiddly to remove it.
I searched for a recipe from Kerala and found one on Sanjeev Kapoor’s blog with a couple of minor amendments.
I boiled the cubes of Jackfruit with turmeric in one pot, lightly cooked the spices in a small frying pan on the cooker top. I used another saucepan with ground nut oil for the mustard seeds until they started to sputter, then cooked down the onions in the oil. I crushed the freshly cooked whole spices in a mortar and pestle, then added and crushed the garlic, chilli and ginger in the mortar along with the tamarind paste rather than using a blender. Next I cooked down this paste in the oil with the mustard seeds, added half a pack of creamed coconut and used strained chopped tomatoes rather than puree, using a little of the juice along with the recommended amount of water. I didn’t have any curry leaves, annoying as I looked at them in Taj Stores but thought I had some in the cupboard but alas did not.
Result – delicious! The slightly sweet flavour of the fruit, the added dimension of coconut and the slightly sour flavour of tamarind combine beautifully; the texture of fruit is amazing. I served it with white rice and one of my favourite Geeta chutneys.
Nutritionally Jackfruit has a lot to offer, it has a high proportion of protein and fibre and a wide range of vitamins; Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Riboflavin, Magnesium, Potassium, Copper, Manganese and is loaded with antioxidents. Take a look at what Healthline has to say.
