And fall mine did. Armed with my vegetable cleaver, homemade barbecue sauce and my newly bought jackfruit from Chinatown, I set out to make vegetarian ‘pulled pork.’
Google searches turned up several sites of tips. I learned that I must oil my hands and knife because the fruit is sticky. I did and set about dissecting the jackfruit. I came up with 2 bowls: one with nuts and one full of flesh that resembled roasted garlic cloves. “This is easy” I thought. Not as labour-intensive as some of the blog posts led me to believe.
As I cooked the flesh in the sauce I wondered why it didn’t have the stringy look I was going for. Apparently I used the wrong part of the fruit! I guess ‘I don’t know jack’.
Into every bakers life a cake must fall. Sometimes it’s the ‘oops’ moments that yield the best results. I was hoping this too would apply to cooking. Sadly not.
I found the mixture, which had been marinating for 24 hours, completely inedible. I boiled the nuts as suggested and they were somewhat edible. Apparently they can be used in the same way as roasted chestnuts. I knew that barbecued jackfruit could taste good as I have already had a soft shell taco full of it at Hot Beans. Lesson learned: it is the hard-to-pick out stringy bits surrounding the fruit sacs that are the mother lode.
Another day another $8 and I will eventually master my ‘pulled pork’ barbecue jackfruit…
