Gulai Nangka (Indonesian Unripe Jackfruit Curry)

Nangka or Jackfruit is a native tropical fruit from South and Southeast Asia. It is widely use in cuisines from the regions. Ripe Jackfruit tastes sweet and parfumy, perfect for desserts or just to eat it like that. Unripe Jackfruit is also edible but it needs to be properly cooked. The texture of unripe Jackfruit is stringy and a bit chewy. On this stage, the fruit has no strong smell and it absorbs well the spices you mix in with. I have been told that once its cooked, unripe Jackfruit tastes like meat. Which is make sense, regarding how chewy flaky and stringy the texture is. 

Today I am making Gulai Nangka. Gulai is a curry dish with sauce. Gulai Nangka originally comes from West Sumatra, the local name is Gulai Cubadak. The real Gulai Cubadak uses also long-bean and cabbage. Since I have none of those extra vegetables, I improvised by adding quail eggs. The cooking process takes a bit of time, but its only because I like the sauce to be thick than soupy altho usually Gulai Nangka is a bit soupy.  

Ingredients:

1 can of cooked and peeled quail eggs (in water), 

1 can of unripe Jackfruit (around 400gr), cut to bite size,

1 can of coconut milk 

500 ml of water.

Ingredients to paste:

6 sweet chillies,

8 bird eyes chillies (depends how hot you want it to be, adjust to your taste of spiciness),

4 shallots,

6 garlic,

3 cm of fresh tumeric,

3 cm of fresh ginger, 

5 cm of fresh galangal,

½ tsp of caraway seeds.

3 tbsp oil 

Spices:

1 ½ tbsp of powdered coriander,

½ tsp cinnamon powder,

½ tsp nutmeg powder,

½ tsp white pepper powder,

3 cardamom pods,

4 cloves buds,

4 kaffir lime leaves,

1 big lemon grass (or two if its small), bruised

2-3 tbsp shredded Indonesian palm sugar (to taste),

2 tbsp dehydrated beef broth (or salt),

oil 

Cooking step:

1. Put all the ingredients to paste and oil into an electric food processor, start it until the ingredients become a smooth paste,

2. In a big wok, sauté the paste until it fragrants. Normally we don't add oil to sauté since we pasted the ingredients with oil instead of water, but you can always add oil if you find it necessary,

3. Once the paste starts to fragrant, add the rest of the spices and continue cooking on medium heat,

4. The paste will thicken and the color with get darken, then add coconut milk and water, stir constantly,

5. Bring it to boil and add the quail eggs, again, stir gently,

6. Lower the heat and add the unripe Jackfruit and continue cooking. Since the canned unripe Jackfruit is usually already cooked, you don't need to cooking for too long (although the longer the better so it absorbs all the spice flavor). I simply adjust it to how thick the broth I want and just stop cooking then. 

7. Once its ready, serve with rice.

Happy cooking!!