Raw jackfruit curry - almost tastes like mutton!

Come summers and the jackfruit trees in my hometown would fruit the mightiest of jackfruits, hanging from every inch of space possible. It is quite a fascinating scene actually to see a massive tree and massive green porcupine textured fruits hanging from it's thick bark. In many of the cities that I spent my childhood back in India, jackfruit was considered as quite a common kitchen visitor during summers. While jackfruit is something that is consumed both raw and ripe, for some reason we never got used to relishing ripe varieties. Perhaps because we had classic Alphonso mangoes by our side and nothing can really beat that! In any case, I grew up enjoying so many varieties of jackfruit - from dry to the ones dipped in a rich curry, with all of them similarly satisfying. To be honest, jackfruit always tasted like mutton to me, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why I really enjoyed it.

After coming to the  Netherlands, jackfruit was not something that I frequently encountered in grocery stores, maybe once or twice I sighted something like-it in Asian supermarkets and very quickly I came to the realisation that it was a similar looking cousin durian and not really the jackfruit that I knew, oops! It was not too long ago that I came across a tin of preserved jackfruit in the Asian supermarket and I was quite curious to try my luck with that. The advantage of buying a tinned jackfruit in brine is largely that I don't have to to go through all the hassle of chopping and cleaning one, but nothing can really substitute the flavour of a fresh homegrown jackfruit. I think until I figure out where exactly jackfruit is sold fresh out here, and master the craft of chopping it up, the tins are going to be my buddies!

Serves - 4

Time to prepare - 15 minutes

Time to Cook - 25 minutes

Ingredients

1. 1 can/500gm raw jackfruit
2. 2 red onions
3. 5 cloves of garlic
4. 1 inch piece of ginger 
5. 2 tomatoes
6. 1 tbsp garam masala
7. 1/2 tbsp cumin powder
8. 1/2 tbsp coriander powder
9. 1/2 tbsp turmeric
10. Salt to taste
11. Coriander leaves to garnish
12. Oil to shallow fry jackfruit
13. 2 cups of water

Method

1. Heat some oil in a pan and shallow fry the jackfruit. Drain the excess oil and reserve 4-5 tablespoons for the curry
2. Mince the onions garlic ginger into a fine paste. Blend the tomatoes into a fine paste
3. Heat the reserved oil and add the onion ginger garlic paste. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes or until the onion paste turns golden brown.
4. Once the onion paste is cooked well, add the blended tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes under medium flame.
5. At this moment is the content of the pan Burns and dry, add about half a cup of water. Add on the ground spices like garam masala, Document Bader, coriander powder, turmeric and combine currently.
6. Add the shallow fried jackfruit to the ban, And about Half to 1 cup of water depending on the consistency you would want for the gravy and covered in Cork for 10 minutes.
7. So that some steamed rice and enjoy!