This has been jackfruit vaaram or chakka azhcha . Our Calicut sambandis ( the Malayalam word is quite different I know but what ?) loaded us with jackfruit from their garden when we visited them recently.
I love jackfruit but have never been faced with such variety in various stages of ripeness. So, I’ve had to experiment. Like the banana tree, all parts of the jackfruit can be used.
Fruit – Eaten when ripe.
Seeds – Cooked with potato, as curry in the usual South Indian style.
Strands – surrounding and separating the fruit inside, can be fried into chips. I forgot whether they should be dried first but they tasted good, fried fresh.
Raw jackfruit – to be made into curry Kerala style -chakka Puzhukku. Its like our kootu only without the dal.
The complete recipe is here.
Or Cuban style from BBC Good Cooking mag. The base is really very good, though I skipped many ingredients like the white wine and olives.Could be used for other vegetables or meat.
Cuban style Jackfruit Ropa Veja
Jackfruit – 1 raw, peeled and separated into stringy strands.
Onions – 3 sliced.
Red pepper – 1 sliced long and thin
Yellow pepper – 1 sliced long and thin
Garlic cloves- 3 chopped
Tomatoes – 4 deseeded and chopped
Tomato paste – 2 tbsp
Tomato puree- 1/2 cup
Cumin powder – 1 tbsp
Coriander powder – /2 tbsp
Green chilles – 3 cut in half lengthwise
chilli powder – 1/4 tsp (my addition)
white wine – 150 ml
olives – 1/2 cup
capers- 1/2 cup
chives- 3 tsp
oregano – 3 tbsp
parsley – 3 tbs
Method:
– Heat 75 ml oil in large pan until it begins to smoke.
– add onions, bell peppers; allow them to turn a deep brown colour, stirring only when necessary
-add garlic and cook for 30 secs
– add tomato pieces and cook till it has given off liquid
– add tomato paste, cumin, coriander and cook for 5 min
– add water (white wine) and allow to boil
– add tomato puree, green chillies and capers
– bring liquid to boil. Add jackfruit with a little salt and simmer on low flame for about 2 hours until tender.
– add a little water when necessary
– add chives, parsley and oregano
Serve with a little ghee rice or saffron rice.
And if the fruit ripens too much, just turn it into chaka varati or jackfruit jam. Its simple, just takes a little time.
Ingredients :
jackfruit – 1 cup
powdered jaggery – 1.5 cups.
powdered cardamom (optional)
ghee- 1/2 cup.
Pressure cook jackfruit and then mash well or grind in a mixie.
Dissolve the jaggery in a little water. Strain
In a heavy bottomed vessesl, heat jaggery, mix in jackfruit pulp and then cook them together on slow heat for about 30 minutes. Start adding the ghee in dribbles and mix it in well.
Cool; store in fridge and take out small portions to eat with chappatis or bread or could be stuffed in something like poli.
Ready for Distribution . If you lived in ooty too, you would have got some:-)