Jackfruit Seeds and Drumstick Leaves Thoran

A JFI Event started by our dear Indian Food Blog Queen Indira and the super cool ingredient choice by our cutest Bee – and you thought I would have only one entry?

Jackfruit Seeds are edible portions of the jackfruit. They have a nutty taste. I had some left over Jackfruit Seeds and some drumstick leaves. Jackfruit seeds which bee roasted are of ripe jackfruit. You roast only ripe jackfruit seeds. With the raw jackfruit, you don’t normally do that.

This is a simple delicious thoran. Acutally it tasted so good, I snacked on it than eating it with rice :)

Scrape jackfruit seeds, slice it into long pieces and cook them with salt and turmeric. – 1 cup

Crush ½ cup coconut, 1/3 cup shallots, 5 green chilies, 1 sprig of curry leaves, 1 tsp cumin seeds, 3 pods of garlic, salt and turmeric.

Mix this with the cooked jackfruit and add the washed and squeezed drumstick leaves.

Cover and cook in low flame until the drumstick leaves are cooked.

Serve with rice or roti.

Artichoke Thoran

What will Americans do to a foreign vegetable? They would add cheese slices on it and put in between two breads.
British? They would make it a tikka or fry it in batter and serve with chips.
A malayalee woman? Add some coconut shavings and make it a thoran.

That’s exactly what I do when I see all these alien looking vegetables like Asparagaus, Artichokes etc. I used to read in story books about asparagaus, artichokes etc and wanted to see these vegetables at least once. That time there was no Internet and now anyone in any corner of the world can easily see a picture of anything. Exciting isn’t it? A child sitting under a table (supposedly study time), reading a story book, munching a mango with some salt, wondering what this vegetable would look like that keeps on coming up on her story book pages, can now just click on the mouse and can get every information she needs.

She grows up, gets married, lands in a small town at an alien land, where the most familiar vegetable you get is a cabbage. Rest everything looks completely out of this world. With a deep sigh, with the memories of all those veggies she told her mama she hates while at home, floods in with a deep hurtful taste, she picks up one of these alien vegetables and make a thoran and voila…home…now seems a little more nearer.

Recipe for Artichoke Thoran.

How to clean?
First wash thoroughly in between the leaves and then cut off the stalk and two inches from the top.
Then pluck out all the outer leaves until you reach the leaf where it is half yellow and half green. The outer leaves are hard and chewy. For thoran, you need to take only the soft inside leavesCut it into two. Dip the cut portions in ½ tsp turmeric water since artichokes turn black immediately. Now take out the violet colored leaves and the small hairy portion which holds the violet leaves.
Dice it small (two artichokes prepared like this would yield 1 cup).
I had one cup of moong dal sprouts too. Blanch the sprouts.

Small onion – ¼ cup

Heat 1 tsp oil, splutter mustard seeds, 1 sprig of curry leaves, 1 whole red chili split into two, add diced onion and 1 crushed garlic, 3 green chilies, sauté until onion is translucent, add diced artichoke and the blanched sprouts, add salt and turmeric cover and cook in low flame. After 10 minutes, add ¼ cup of grated coconut and mix and cook for another 5 minutes.
Keep the fire in maximum and open cook for one or two minutes until dry.
Serve as a side dish for rice or roti.

Now don’t you want to know what it really tastes like? It tastes like banana flower. Yes! Ditto! Missing banana flower thoran? Make with artichokes!

Note: The leaves you pluck out from the artichoke can be put into sambar. It would be like drumstick sambar. You eat artichoke the same way you eat drumstick. The outer leaves you discard for a thoran are chewy. You just suck on it like you do for drumstick and discard the harder skin.

Guess

Yeah, Yeah I know it is easy! But, I am not here to make your life more difficult.:)

Coconut red chammanthi

Don’t call my chammanthi chutney please. Chutneys are not chammanthi. Chutney is watery version of a chammanthi. In Kerala, this red chammanthi is made in a stone ammikkallu. View a picture of ammikkallu from another blog.

I don’t know the English term for ammikkallu. It is a flat bed stone with a round rolling stone. You place the ingredients on the flat bed stone and with the rolling pin, you crush and grind the ingredients and a chammanthi made like that is bliss.

I have seen portable version of these heavy stone in India. One of these days when I can sneak one into my suitcase without my husband's knowledge, I will surely bring it here. But for now, I have to make it in a small wet grinder. I have Revel small wetgrinder and is perfect for small quantities like chammanthi.

At home, mom would prepare the chammanthi using the stone crusher and finally make it into a ball shape. Somehow, the ball shape of the chammanthi is etched into my mind, whenever I make it, I have to have it finally in ball shape.

This is eaten with rice. Rose matta rice kanji, roasted papad and red coconut chammanthi….mmmmm.

How to make it?
Fresh grated Coconut – 2 cups
Red Chili powder – 2 tsp
Fresh Tamarind without the seed – 1.5 square inch (Do not use the paste)
One small shallot
Salt

Coarse grind all this together without adding any water. The water content the coconut is more than enough. Do not grind it fine. Then it becomes a chutney like consistency. Make it into a ball shape (optional) :-)

Serve with rice. This usually goes with only rice.

JFI - Chakkapuzhukku (Mashed Raw Jackfruit)

I have been missing out on many JFI’s mainly due to laziness. But as soon as I saw this JFI ingredient by our cute Bee, I knew I couldn’t miss it. JFI-JackFruit. Whoa! Can anything be more Indian ingredient than that? Can any food blogger with turmeric tainted blood stay away from that?

I couldn’t! and guess what? My mom who doesn’t even know I blog, sends me packets and packets of fresh jackfruit through a friend just two weeks ago. This is what you call heavenly godly coincidence.

Then, what do I do? I being a true blue Malayalee think about all different kind of recipes for JFI to surprise everyone and end up with the good old Chakkaapuzhukku, a very Kerala dish. Aarggh...! I think I am cursed.

I don’t have to search the internet to write down these. Just need to jot down my memories. While growing up on plenty of jackfruits every season in Kerala, I grew upon two varieties. One is koozhchakka, a very fibrous variety, but not as tasty as the other one which is varikkachakka. Varikkachakka has a special variety known as thenvarikka which really tastes like honey. Varikkachakka fruit is very firm and you can eat as much as you want without getting a stomach ache.

1. jackfruit seed removed and halved
2. thin skin covering of the jackfruit seed
3. white strings on the whole fruit
4. whole fruit plucked from the thick skin
5. how the seed is attached to the whole fruit.

Usually you ripen the varikkachakka and eat is as a fruit. People prefer ripe varikkachakka as a fruit than the koozhchakka. Raw koozhachakka is prepared into curries etc. It is said that if you feast on too much koozhachakka, you get a stomach ache. I am not sure on this or whether the elders made us believe it.

Most jackfruit trees need special care while growing to make it varikka. Even if you buy varikka varieties to plant, it might end up as a koozha, since I remember my dad telling, the trees offshoot should be trimmed early or something like that.

Cutting jackfruit is a very tedious process. It is full of oozy sap that will stick to anything in contact. In most Kerala homes, there is an open verandah at the backside near to the kitchen, where all these kind of work is done. My mom or grandmom would sit down on the floor, with one leg folded upwards. They then hold the chakka with the left hand and with the right foot and would cut it into pieces with a hoom hoom noise as the knife goes down. We all sit round waiting it to be cut and distributed to savor it. I remember this process when I hear someone crib about cutting pineapple. I would think, wait until you cut a jackfruit.

While handling whole jackfruit, one needs special care to avoid the sap from sticking to your clothes etc. So you need to be very careful while cutting it. If you eat it directly, your hand also will be coated with a light film of sap. To wash it off, you first apply coconut oil and then wipe it clean with a cloth and then wash it off. There is a superstition that if you wash it off directly without oil, next year the tree won’t bear any fruits. I think this is a technique to remind everyone that without applying coconut oil to your hands first, you cannot actually get it cleaned thoroughly.

Even eating jackfruit is an art. My mom would cut the whole jackfruit into small portions with the skin on. We kids would then pluck off the fruit from the hard skin, take out the white strings attached to each fruit, bite into it and cut open into two. Then we take off the seed and a thin skin which covers the seeds and eat the fruit. Seeds, the white string covering, the thin cover of the seeds should not be eaten. Seeds can be eaten cooked.

Chakkapuzhukku Recipe

This dish is made with raw koozha jackfruit.

Half the jackfruit like 1 and cut each fruit into two inch pieces. – 3 cups

Cook covered with little salt and turmeric powder and ½ cup of water. When cooked, crush 1 cup of coconut, with ½ teaspoon cumin seeds, 5 green chilies and one sprig of curry leaves. Add the mixture crushed to this dish, mix well and cook covered for 5 more minutes and mash the cooked jackfruit lightly.

Heat 1 tsp of coconut oil, sauté two whole red chilies broken and add to the dish.This is served as a main dish usually with chicken or some meat curry.

My picture doesn’t show it completely mashed, since I didn’t know how the picture would turn out, but you would need to mash it little more, maybe for 5 more minutes to get the right consistency of a puzhukku. Puzhukku in Malayalam refers to boiled and mashed.

This post is also for my dear Revathi who had so many questions about jackfruit.

See 1. KappaPuzhukku
2. Jackfruit Erisseri