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| Janet Cutting the Jack Fruit |
One of the adventures of Africa is being introduced to new foods. Some are delightful surprises and some of just surprises. One of those surprises came in the form of Jack Fruit. At least that is what I was told it was called. I don’t know its right name. It is larger than a football, roughly the same color and shape, but with a surface of small spikes covering the dimpled skin. I’ve seen these for sale at roadside stands on the Zomba road and thought of stopping, but lacked the courage.
Monday my colleague from PC(USA), Janet, who was visiting from South Africa, took the plunge to buy one and bring it as a gift. She said she remembered them from Thailand. One of the reasons I never bought one was that I didn’t really know what to do with it once I got it. Janet said she had seen the street vendors in Thailand handle them so she was willing to tackle the task. I let her. It proved to be a task.
She began by gingerly cutting into the rind, careful to only go about an inch deep, so as not to damage the fruit nestled in the stringy membrane protected by the tough rind. When she had scored the entire fruit, she pulled it apart, revealing a phallic like “pit,” no doubt the source of the common name, and thousands of stringy, sticky petals, each about an inch long, that concealed the buds of fruit. These had to be pried away from their protectors and then a small pit extracted from the center of each bud of fruit. There were about ten of these buds buried in the petals. This extraction process took about 30 minutes. We tasted and laughed as Janet extracted them and I held the bowl to receive them and de-pit them. The buds had a nondescript, slightly sweet taste. We observed that it was hardly worth all the effort and no doubt the reason it was not a popular fruit treat. We ventured a guess that it had been some inquisitive monkeys who first discovered the center of the fruit and they had a more direct way of extracting the meat than we did.
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| The fruit is the dense area to the left of Janet's fingers |
Only after we harvested all the fruit buds did we learn the real challenge of the fruit and why it is not popular. Janet’s hands were covered with the sticky substance that protected the fruit. She suggested that I clean up the rind while she washed up. That was more easily said than done. The rind was easy enough to bag in plastic and throw out, but getting the sticky off Janet’s hands was another matter. Dishwashing soap and water didn’t touch it. Vim (Malawian Ajax) only made her hands red and tender, but no less sticky. The soap treatments were only causing the substance to become white and more pliable, but not removing it. I brought out some Wet Ones, hoping the alcohol would do the trick. Fifteen Wet Ones later, the sticky was mostly gone, having slowly rolled off in layers with each succeeding wipe. The rest of the evening Janet rubbed her hands. They became diminishingly sticky as she rubbed and peeled off the remaining residue of the adhesive-like film that defied soap and alcohol wipes. By time for bed, she was comfortable that she would not stick to the bedding, at least. We voted to leave this fruit to the monkeys.
