Fruit of the matter

The biggest advantage of the jackfruit is its versatility. It is eaten as a vegetable when tender, raw, or semi-ripe, and as a fruit when ripe. As a vegetable, it finds its way into curries and stews, dry stir-fry, and biryani. It is deep-fried as koftas and fritters, dried and fried as chips, and pickled. The sun-dried seeds go into curries or are just roasted and eaten as snacks. Food is steamed in the leaves. Even the core is sometimes cooked. The ripe fruit is used in sweets, syrups, jams and chutneys. Recently, in Goa, Hansel Vaz of Cazulo Premium Feni and bartender Rohan Barbosa have experimented with a jackfruit cocktail. Castaad Ponos uses a syrup made of the fruit mixed with cashew feni, to create a sour.

Photo: IIHR Hirehally

Jackfruit is revered in the South. India has the highest number of red flesh jackfruit (or chandra halasu) trees, a milder and less sweet version of the yellow fruit commonly found elsewhere. Panruthi in Tamil Nadu is known as a jackfruit paradise. There, jackfruit is farmed on over 10,000 hectares of land and farmers are solely dependent on it. No fruit here goes to waste. In Kochi, T Mohandas grew tired of the jackfruit being wasted in his garden. Together, he and a friend created a WhatAapp group (Chakkakkoottam) and invited people over. Since April, these social gathering see people travel from afar to share jackfruit and their stories about it. Some even carry fruit from their gardens, homemade products, and saplings to share. Mohandas’ trees are now bare, nothing goes to waste.

The tree is so abundant in Kerala, every household usually has one. We end up using the jackfruit wherever possible

In Kerala, the chakka is the official state fruit and finds form in chips, halwas, jams, curries and even ice cream. Kerala also boasts the only jackfruit-dedicated restaurant in the country. Alnas Chakka Restaurant in Muttippala has 30 preparations of the fruit including pakodas, payasam, bajji (fritters), cutlets, biryani, and drinks and desserts including jackfruit milkshakes, juices, sherbet, and soda. Throughout Kerala you can find coffee powder, jackfruit seed pickles, chutney powders, packaged halwa, barfi and biscuits.

“The tree is so abundant in Kerala, every household usually has one. We end up using the jackfruit wherever possible,” said Bhawani Balasubramanian, a banker from Kerala who now lives in Mumbai. She uses ripe jackfruit to make sweets like Chakka Pradhaman. Ripe jackfruit is cooked till soft, added to a kadhai with jaggery and stirred continuously till it becomes soft and thick (halwa-like consistency). This mixture when cooled stays refrigerated for a year. “When you want to eat it, take a portion and heat it in ghee with some coconut milk. Add some coconut slivers on top and that’s it,” she says.

This tendency to use jackfruit and create something that can be eaten later is replicated elsewhere too. Some regions make jackfruit pappad and in Goa, Saath or Sattam (fruit leather) is a common rainy day snack. Goans, traditionally, eat two kinds of jackfruit, the softer rassal, and the firmer kaapo. “We remove the seed from the rassal fruit, put everything in the mixer and create a paste that is dried for five six days. This toffee-like treat was typically eaten in the monsoons months when we had cravings for the fruit. Now we store it through the year,” says said Veena Kantak, a psychiatrist in Margao, Goa.

Forget pineapples on pizzas, Goans eat their pineapple with jackfruit! The semi-ripened fruit is paired with pineapple in a sweet and spicy curry Ansa Ponsachem Tondak The curry is popular with the Goan Saraswat Brahmin community and has tropical fruits like pineapple, jackfruit and sometimes, mango. “This is a special dish you will find this at all of our weddings in the summer. People love it because it is rare to get these fruits together otherwise,” says Kantak. In her home, the fruit is eaten as it grows, raw to semi-ripe and then ripe. There’s a raw kuvlo and bhikna (tender seeds) tondak, a grated coconut dish with shrimp or a sushel — chutney with coconut, sesame seeds and jaggery and Pansachem Dhonas: a cake made with ripe jackfruit, Goan palm jaggery and coconut.

Ponsachem Fest had demos on cooking the fruit and seeds, cutting the jackfruit, grafting the plant, and stalls selling Sattam, Dhonas, bhoje (fritters), Pudde (sweet rice cones steamed in jackfruit leaves) and even jackfruit coffee.

“In the olden days, the abundance of jackfruit meant there was a lot left over. Some people turned it into sattam to send to relatives abroad. My family would send sattam and dried seeds to use in curries all the way to Kenya,” said Marius Fernandes, known as Goa’s Festival Man for his work in highlighting old, forgotten festivals. In June, Fernandes helped curate a festival dedicated to jackfruit and its uses in Goan homes. Ponsachem Fest had demos on cooking the fruit and seeds, cutting the jackfruit, grafting the plant, and stalls selling Sattam, Dhonas, bhoje (fritters), Pudde (sweet rice cones steamed in jackfruit leaves) and even jackfruit coffee. This festival coincides with Sao Joao (St Joseph’s feast). “In the olden days, newly-married couples would return to the brides’ village during Sao Joao carrying food to share. Everyone shared the gifts, and there was always music and procession.”