I’ll confess my bias upfront. I love jackfruit. Blame my genes. Growing up, summer holidays in Kerala inevitably involved a surfeit of the gloriously sweet, sticky fruit.
At my grandmother’s house, as the massive knobbly fruits began to ripen, they would be hauled into the kitchen. Then our consistently grouchy cook would generously smear her hands and a heavy knife with coconut oil, before cutting through the dense forbidding exterior, through layers of sticky, gooey fibre to get to the juicy pods. As children, we gathered around like vultures, swooping in the minute the fruit was revealed in all its golden glory.
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By lunchtime, the seeds would have found their way into a coconut-flecked avial. At tea time, it would be served as ada, folded carefully into soft envelopes of rice dough, before being steamed in a ghee-smeared banana leaf. After dinner, we’d end with spoons of freshly made chakka varatti, a gloriously fudgy concoction made by cooking the pureed fruit with a generous amount of jaggery and a dusting of cardamom powder.
However, as popular as the fruit is, according to a Kerala State Government website, about 75 per cent of the harvest is wasted every year — that’s an estimated 35 crore jackfruits. It’s not much better in other parts of India, according to James Joseph, founder of JackFruit365, a company he launched a few years ago in an attempt to revive the fruit in a contemporary format. The problem, he says, is the inescapable fact that the fruit is “sticky, smelly and seasonal”. Seen as a ‘poor man’s food’ in Kerala, because of its natural abundance, it brings in less and less money as the season progresses till, finally, at the height of the season, the unwieldy, heavy fruits simply fall off the tree and rot undisturbed.
It’s a challenging conundrum. A fruit that many people love, with many sterling qualities, on one hand. And a host of practical problems — such as transport, storage and preparation on the other. This is why the Chennai Jackfruit Festival, which just concluded at the Chennai Trade Centre, is important: It’s time farmers, producers and cooks band together to find creative, workable solutions.
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Since the customer’s primary focus is on taste, this festival offered everything from conventional jams, payasams and appams, to experimental cakes, sandwiches and even tacos. The theme was proving how versatile the fruit can be — and at the end of each day, to reinforce this, a buffet would roll out, featuring a spread of about 20 dishes, all made from jackfruit.
In reality, the products on offer included both hits and misses. It may be a super food but, as with any ingredient, jackfruit has its limitations. The ice cream, for example, had a disagreeable aftertaste. And the oily jackfruit spring rolls were an exercise in futility — as were the over-ambitious, exasperatingly tough biscuits. But, this relentless experimentation did have happy outcomes too: a pleasingly dense halwa made from jackfruit seeds for instance. Also intriguing pickles, stuffed dosas and surprisingly crisp pakoras, all made from the raw fruit. Of course, there were all the classics: Jackfruit uniappams, chips and — unfortunately — steamed adas that were so tough, dry and tasteless that I was tempted to put the chef on the phone with my grandmother, so she could explain the recipe to him properly. I’m not joking. Well, not really. A festival like this is important because it gave this often-maligned fruit much needed publicity. And for successful publicity, traditional dishes at least should be executed competently.
It is important that customers are encouraged to expand their horizons. Not just because this is a powerhouse of nutrition, but also because it is a drought-resistant, evergreen, environment-friendly, indigenous crop. Joseph (whose company freeze-dries the fruit, so it can be easily stored and transported, before being rehydrated with water for cooking) says the jackfruit can be a shock-absorber for farmers, because it yields dependably every year.
Make the most of it this season. And once you’re done with eating it raw, eating it cooked, and eating it preserved — try another trick I learnt from the festival. Make jackfruit fritters: hot, crisp and fluffy outside, comfortingly sweet inside.
It’s like eating sunshine.
( The Hindu was the media partner for the event.)