Lesson 6.0.1 BREADFRUIT and JACKFRUIT - Food value

 

FOOD FOREST COURSE 

AGRO-ECONOMY  Lesson 6.0.1 

BREADFRUIT and JACKFRUIT - Food value

Food value

Once the breadfruit is harvested it will quickly deteriorate and experience has taught the Islanders how to preserve this staple food outside harvesting times. Breadfruit can be cooked for direct eating but drying and fermenting are also popular ways of preserving this food.

 

Ripe breadfruit can be peeled and cut up into chunks with the heart of the fruit removed and discarded.  The cubed pieces are then placed into a bucket with dried breadfruit leaves placed in layers in between.  The whole lot needs to be squashed down to exclude as much air as possible until the bucket is full. Place the lid on top. This mash ferments into an acidic paste which keeps up to a year or more.

When the breadfruit paste is used for cooking, coconut cream can be used to enhance the taste.  Apparently, this paste can also be sun dried and ground into flour. The breadfruit can also be ground into a paste without this fermentation process. The peeled and sliced fruit are oven cooked for two hours and then pounded into a smooth paste. Sun dry this paste and then place in the food processor and grind into flour. The breadfruit can also be grill roasted over a fire overnight and then sun dried until thoroughly dried. The dried pieces can then be stored for many months.

The most popular way of cooking breadfruit for direct eating is simply to pierce the skin before baking or roasting whole, otherwise when boiling or steaming the breadfruit it is peeled first. Not all the seed of the breadfruit are suitable for eating so make sure you know which varieties are good to eat. The seed are eaten after roasting or boiling them first. It is the seedless varieties of breadfruit that is preferred by the Islanders.

When I had my first encounter with Jackfruit it was like a bad mistake. As I ate into the flesh of the fruit, my mouth was engulfed with a latex like glue and for hours afterwards I was peeling latex gum off my mouth!  Following that experience I had no interest in this strange fruit, but many years later, when Jenet, a Papua New Guinea friend, showed me how it was harvested and prepared, I was won over.

Jackfruit can be eaten when they are immature or when they are ripe.  The immature fruit is used for its young seed and these can be made into a delicious curry.  The ripe fruit is eaten raw and tastes like banana with a vanilla flavour and a pineapple texture. 

Breadfruit and Jackfruit can be eaten in three stages; young, immature and mature.

So where does the gummy latex glue come into it? With the immature fruit it is the seed that is prized but these need to be meticulously cut out of the firm flesh with the help of lots of oil on the hands and on the knife as the latex is present right throughout the fruit. I have found it to be a laborious process but nonetheless worth it. 

The seed have a delightful nutty taste. When the fruit is fully ripened, the gummy latex has all but disappeared and the only part of the fruit that houses it is in the centre of the fruit. It is best to cut the fruit in half-length wise and cut out the core as this will remove the last of the latex gum altogether. It is then a matter of popping the seed out of the flesh that surrounds it. It is the flesh around the seed that is the edible part of the Jackfruit. The seed from a matured Jackfruit can still be used for cooking with but they need to have the outer shell taken of and boiled for much longer.  Don’t forget to reserve some seed for planting, as the seed need to be fresh to germinate.

Text from the roots, Elisabeth Ferkonia (Aus.) PDC studied with Bill Mollison,

 

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