A jackfruit curry
abandoned, revisited
Sometime in February, walking in a less familiar part of town, I passed an extra-snazzy looking vegetable store. Curious, I popped in, just to see what they had; that’s how I went home with a thick wedge of peeled, prepared, plastic-wrapped jackfruit. It seemed much more approachable than an entire spiky one, and I had my eye on a few recipes.
Into the fridge it went, where I’m embarrassed to say it sat forgotten, slowly rotting into a slimy black mess. Eventually, it was relegated to the compost bin.
It should have been the end of it—I hate wasting food and wasn’t about to do that again—but I’d started seeing prepared jackfruit everywhere—the little corner shops where I usually get my produce often had a bag of nice fresh slices just sitting there that I’d never noticed before (or maybe it’s just in season). I didn’t let myself buy any, though, until last Wednesday, when I decided today is the day I’m cooking it today.
Timmur: Stories and Flavours from Nepal, the cookbook by Prashanta Khanal that I’ve written about before, has two recipes for jackfruit curry; I chose Ajiko Rukh Katharko Tarkari, the author’s grandmother’s version, mostly because it has yoghurt in it and I enjoy a tangy curry.
My mistake was not even glancing over the other recipe, which came first in the book sequentially and contained the all-important jackfruit how-tos missing from the second, the one I’d chosen. Suffice it to say that even though I was not peeling my own from scratch, jackfruits still have a sticky, oozy sap, and the instructions given were to oil your hands, knife, board, everything, before beginning. I found this out a little too late and though my wooden cutting board was surprisingly impervious to the goo, fingers and knife were not. A little experimentation proved oil nearly as useful in removing as repelling it, though I think prevention would have been easier. Grease before touching. You have been warned.
Both curry recipes called for young jackfruit – when fully ripe, its segments are eaten as a sweet fruit. According to Wikipedia, a single jackfruit can get as large as 55 kilos and is the world’s largest tree fruit, which is information you bet I’m filing away for a trivia quiz night one day.
**
This is my first time trying jackfruit at any stage of its life, so I’m clueless. The seeds are a lot more solid than I expected, and I’m wondering whether to remove them, but this the recipe doesn’t say. A bit of online research turns up the fact that jackfruit seeds are edible if cooked, though there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on whether they’re actually toxic when raw or just indigestible—if you should know, please enlighten us all in the comments.
In any case I left the seeds in, and marinated the chopped up chunks with yoghurt and freshly roasted and ground spices; after a few hours of sitting, all was soon boiling away in my thickest-bottomed pot. A friend told me she pressure-cooks hers, which I didn’t as I was trying to follow the recipe, minus the traditional kasaudi pot, which I don’t own. I was still trying to figure out if it was cooked or not when I got a message from a friend, flying out in the wee hours of the morning and was I up for a final drink? It would have been nice to know earlier, but life is like that sometimes and the randomness of hearing from people unexpectely is a spontaneous part of Kathmandu life that I’ve come to appreciate more and more, even when it throws my plans off.
I turned the curry off and headed to Thamel. It was late and I was tired when I got home (hence the brief post last week) and I couldn’t face lots more cooking time. The cooled pot went into the fridge, and I ate leftovers instead, and a random banana.
**
In the morning I had a taste of the curry and even though it hadn’t fallen apart in the way I’d expected—probably because my chunks were rather larger than the bite-size the recipe suggested—it did tasted fully cooked. I re-heated it and had some over leftover rice and potatoes.
It was a great first bite.
I’m not sure what I expected, really, but I was still surprised. The cooked seeds, the shape of almonds but far larger, tasted like extra-firm tubers, and the jackfruit flesh itself flaked in a way that reminded me more than anything of artichoke hearts. In fact, for all people talk about jackfruit as a meat substitute, I think it would make an excellent artichoke substitute. It’s a pretty niche market, I admit: artichoke lovers such as myself in a country where they are both extremely rare and extremely puny if they do appear. Simply boiled (seeds removed) and marinated in herbs and olive oil, I think they’d be very similar.
As for the curry itself—it was interesting, but as I ate away I started to find it a little nondescript; maybe because of its striking appearance, I’d expected jackfruit to have a more interesting taste; in reality, it didn’t have much flavor of its own. That’s on me, though, not the titular grandmother. My curries are hit-and-miss at the best of times, much less when cooking with a completely unfamiliar ingredient, and I think I should have perhaps gone a little heavier on the spices (I didn’t know how much my wedge weighed, so I played it by ear, which you can do if you’re more familiar with something than I was with this). I also realized too late that the yoghurt I had to hand, though unsweetened, was mild and creamy. A sourer curd is often used here in cooking, and would have been much more suitable. Or perhaps a squeeze of citrus. The tang was muted.
I’d still recommend the recipe. It was good, but I didn’t love it in the way I wanted to. Then again, some ingredients are an acquired taste, I know, and this was the first time I’d either cooked or eaten this particular one.
As I write this it’s occurred to me that maybe the jackfruit curry was meant to be mildly spiced as mine turned out, but served as part of a larger Nepali meal, with rice and dal and achaars and other more heightened curries, rather than as a solo dish, the only thing I was eating.
So I’m down to try again, whether this or another way. If you have jackfruit tips and preparation methods, let me know. I’d love to hear from someone with experience. And if you live in Kathmandu and know of an eatery that serves jackfruit curry, hit me up with that, too. I’d like to taste a version made by someone who knows what they’re doing!
