jackfruit seeds
My mother recently left a huge slice of jackfruit in our fridge when she came to visit. After an offhand comment about how much work it is to cut up and needing to use oil on your hands because the sap sticks to everything, she left and left me wondering just how much work was involved.
Turns out, if you use enough oil and grease down everything in sight, it's not that bad. I used a solid layer of canola oil on the chopping board, my hands and the knife, from blade to hilt. At that point, I suddenly realized the danger of the situation; I have to chop away at something while the knife, the cutting surface and the object in question are all as slick as.. well, oil.
I think it's some kind of sap similar to latex, but I can only imagine the mess it would have been without the oil. Every few minutes, my hands would start to feel a little sticky, like stickiness when you have old grease on your fingers and I would have to quickly smother everything in oil again. Oddly enough, the jackfruit doesn't taste at all of the oil, and if I hadn't been the one cutting and preparing it, I would never have guessed. :-)
One fun part was figuring out what to do with the seeds. I'm a firm believer in using as much of a plant as possible, so it was a neat challenge to see what I could do with jackfruit seeds. It turns out that they're almost a delicacy in Asian parts of the world, and since I doing rice and curry for dinner, I decided to roast them, chop them and simmer them in a traditional South Indian lentil dish, parappu. It was amazing. The consistency was mild, faintly nutty and with a creamy texture similar to firm potatoes. In fact, it was so interesting that it almost felt a little wasted in curry, so next time, I'd like to try seasoning them with salt and my grandmother's curry powder, and deep frying them to a slight crisp.
