My family and I spent 18 days in Fiji recently. I had sooo many questions before we went - questions for which in the main, I couldn't find answers to. So, upon our return, armed with some answers, I have decided to share my discoveries with you.
My hope is that my discoveries might be helpful in your planning, decision making and go a little way towards making your Fijian holiday that much more enjoyable and even safer.
Today's post, the 6th in my Fijian series, is about the sappy jack fruit.
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| Mango and jackfruit (Photo taken by and copyright Maria Ngo) |
The case of the sappy jackfruit - mystery solved, case closed
What is a jackfruit? No, Jack didn't discover it. But it was eventually named after the William Jack (1795-1822) who was a Scottish botanist who worked for the East India Company. The fruit is a native of India and the first Europeans who came across them were the Portuguese in 1498.The Malayalam name for it is chakka and the Portuguese called it jaca.
And that's all the history you are going to get from me.
I remember eating the fruit of this tree when I was growing up in Malaysia. It was readily available and usually prepared for me ready to eat. So, I was not aware of its sticky stick-to-your-finger and stick-to-your-chopping-board and stick-to-your-knife and even stick-to-your-scouring-sponge property of the fruit as you sought to get to the edible part of it and then the clean up after.
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| Preparing a jackfruit (Photo taken by and copyright Maria Ngo) |
The seed, by the way is also edible. It is shaped like a very very small potato and smaller than even a golf ball. You can boil it or roast it. We boiled it; and my son said that it tasted a little like potatoes which he happily consumed for breakfast. The novelty of eating the seeds enthralled him for the first sitting but he lost interest after a day or two of it.
What does the fruit itself taste like? There is a decidedly firm yet almost, just slightly, rubbery, texture to the fruit. It also has a strong fragrance. It is sweet and has its unique property and taste so I cannot compare it to any other type of fruit. You just have to taste it to see for yourself.
And in case you are thinking of the other king of fruits, no, it is nothing like the durian. A whole different category altogether.
You are unlikely to see the fruit in the hotel grocery store as it doesn't keep that well and it has a very strong fragrance. It is readily available at the Nadi Fruit and Vege Market near the bus depot in town.
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| At the Nadi Fruit and Vege Market (Photo taken by and copyright Maria Ngo) |
The fruit is usually sold as a whole fruit so what you'll be eating is not quite what you see initially. You need to cut it open and then remove the edible fruit.
The preparation is where the "fun" begins. Or is it the "nightmare"? Remember the sap I mentioned earlier? Well, once you cut the protective outer bumpy green skin open, you will encounter it.
Oh, the fruit is so delicious to eat, but my goodness, the sap isn't much fun to deal with. It sticks to everything it touches.
Lucky for us, it was my daughter who did the cutting and thus the deducting and postulating and hey presto, her theory was proven correct. (Incidentally, she also did quite well in VCE Chemistry.)
Here, let me let her explain it:
"Molecules can be polar or non-polar. A ‘Polar’ molecule is structed in such a way that one end of it is more negatively charged and the other end is positively charged. Almost like a magnet! The negatively charged end is attracted to the positive ends of other polar molecules. A ‘non-polar’ molecule is the opposite in that there are no ends which are charged at all.
"Water is polar. That means it will be attracted to other molecules that are polar and washes them away by grabbing onto them from your hands.
"Since the Jackfruit sap wasn’t coming off with water that meant it wasn’t a polar molecule. Thus it was non-polar, the opposite of polar.
"And what’s the opposite of water? Fat. Fat is non-polar. Using this logic I used butter to pull off the sticky jackfruit sap from my hands and then used soap/detergent to wash the butter off."
OK, did you get that? If you didn't, that's alright, just take my word for it that it works.
Well, guess what, as I was sharing this experience and discovery of ours with some Malaysian friends of mine later, she said that her mother used to use vegetable oil to remove the sap. So, it's a well known method after all. While I was trawling the internet later, I read that some people suggested using coconut oil to remove the sap - and they suggested that you buy the coconut oil online (duh!?).
So, now when you see a whole uncut, unprepared jackfruit in your travels in Fiji and you need to deal with it yourself to get to its edible fruit, you will know how to handle all that sap.
Thanks so much for joining me in this post. Vinaka vaka levu! See you at my next one.
PS If you found this post useful, click like, share and follow. Much appreciated. Happy travels.
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