Jackfruit Fun!

The first of this season! We bought a lovely tree-ripened jackfruit recently. The fruit smelled heavenly, and tasted better. 🙂

Here are the pics on cutting up the fruit:

Oil-greased hands, sharp knife, and a paper below to prevent the table cloth from spoiling!

Greasing the knife with oil to prevent stickiness

The final result!

Panasa Ginjala Fry

I remember this dish from my childhood. Back then the duty of peeling the white skin off the seeds fell to us kids. But that only made the taste that much more memorable :).

The seeds from the jackfruit need to be dried out ion the sun for at least 1 day. The outer skin then becomes opaque and more visible. This white skin needs to be peeled off to show the brown skin below. Check image 1.

Ingredients:
Jackfruit seeds
Salt
Chilli powder

Method:

• Peel the white skin off the seeds. Chop into halves.
• Cook the seeds ina pressure-cooker.
• Once cooled, drain the brown-coloured water and set aside. The seeds will be soft but still firm.
• In a wok, heat some oil.
• fry the boiled seeds in the oil.
• Drain excess oil, and add salt & chilli powder to taste.

The purpose of boiling the seeds in to prevent it from absorbing too much oil while frying. Raw seeds can be fried, but they will take a long time, absorbing a lot of oil.

Serve hot with rice.

Jackfruit

On a recent trip to Mysore, we bought a jackfruit at the vegetable market.

For cutting a jackfruit, you need:

• A large knife, preferably a professional style one.
• 1 cup of cooking oil.
• sheets of newspaper, on which to rest the fruit.
• Containers for the pieces.

Method:

• To find the correct point at which to cut a jackfruit, it take experience. And  I havent reached there yet. 🙂
• Coat the knife blade with oil, and apply some to your hands as well. There is a lot of stickiness inside the fruit, and the oil prevents it from transfering onto your hands and knife.
• Cut the fruit carefully, to avoid unnecessary damage the the pieces inside.
• Now apply oil on your hands, and carefully seperate the pices from the skin. This needs patience, and quite a bit of strength as well. Not the mention  stamina, to stand in the same place for well over an hour to get all the peices out.

The strings and seeds may be kept aside for adding into curries/ rasam. The poky skin, however, can be gotten rid of. Also be sure to throw away the oil used. Its unusable after applying on the knife and hands.

This is by far, the most difficult fruit to cut. But one must say: the fruits of this labour are definitely sweet!! 😉

Enjoy!!!