Pasar Gourmet: Turning humble jackfruit into something magically delicious

Take a look at a jackfruit the next time you’re at your local market aka pasar. It’s not the kind of thing you look at and go, “Yeah, I reckon I’m gonna try to eat that.” 

First, it’s heavy. It’s covered in nasty spikes. You all but need a machete just to open it up and see what’s inside. There’s nothing easy and obvious about preparing a jackfruit — it clearly put in the effort to tell you it didn’t want to be eaten. You’ve got to look past all the bad bits and see the potential.

Some might say that jackfruit in its natural state is even scarier looking than durien. But what it holds inside can easily be transformed into something indisputably delicious. Photo: Wikimedia

So that’s what you do. You experiment with it. You try this and you try that. Indonesian cooks managed to transmogrify it into gudeg, that most beloved dish of  Yogyakarta. With a little bit of work, you can transform a piece of unripened jackfruit into something that tastes just like a Jerusalem artichoke.  And once you’ve figured out how to do that… where do you go from there? What can you make from that?

It’s a @$%^ adventure, isn’t it? It’s nothing but possibility.

That’s what cooking is. It’s taking all of the things around us and figuring out how to bring out their potential. It’s combining four weird things and making one great thing. It’s looking at the things in the market and going, “People normally use this for that, but does it have to be that way?”

If you’re reading this, you probably live in Indonesia, and that means that you get to have the same adventures in Indonesian markets that I do. You know what that makes you? Lucky.

For a couple of centuries, the same turmeric and nutmeg that you can get for next to nothing at your local pasar were the stock-in-trade of half the world. People murdered one another for these things. Those spices, and the things that you can do with them, they’re an Indonesian birthright, and you can do whatever beautiful, mad thing you want with them.

I’ve been a chef all my life. I’ve worked in some amazing kitchens with some seriously talented and disreputable people. I’ve eaten a whole lot of food that you’d be happy to have for your last meal. But that’s not what gets me in the kitchen every day. What I live for is discovering the new stuff. It’s the experience of taking ingredients that cooks have been working with since the first cave-man cooking fires and finding new possibilities for them.

There’s nowhere better to do this than in Indonesia, and that’s what I want everyone to do. Go to the market. See the possibilities. Don’t blow your money on some imported mess; get something grown in local soil and pulled-up by local hands. Touch and feel and smell and let your mind get into what might be possible. 

Your local pasar is one big opportunity to the best meal that you’ve ever had. Put in the effort, try something new, and have fun doing it.

What’s to Be Done With An Unripened Jackfruit

This is a quick intro on how to get unripened jackfruit ready to be cooked. I’m not going to tell you what to do after it is prepped: that’s the joy of cooking, figuring out what’s possible with an ingredient and your own creativity. 

First things first: get a pre-peeled jackfruit. The guys who open jackfruits move like ninjas because they do it a hundred times a week. Us mere mortals have not the skills, and we should be most concerned with not losing a hand. 

Cut the jackfruit into equal sized portions, and then prepare a stock pot to boil it in. Use whatever bumbu takes your fancy; I’ve been using chicken stock. The sky’s the limit here, as chefs are now using jackfruit to make an imitation pulled pork… so step outside the box and then set the box on fire.

Boil the jackfruit until it is tender — poke it with a fork to test. If the jackfruit has some give to it, you’re ready to go.

Ok, I lied. Here’s an easy place to start with your new ingredient: Add cooking broth of your choice, blend that jackfruit into a puree, add salt and pepper to taste, and watch your diner’s heads explode. 

Oh, and let me know how it goes: blakethornley.bt@gmail.com 


About Chef Blake Thornley

Chef Blake Thornley is the head chef at Kemang’s own Queens Head. Before that, he was the executive chef at the award-winning Mosaic in Bali. He wants you to have as much fun cooking as he is — which is quite a lot. 
 



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