Kitchen experiment:
Unripe jackfruit seeds as cream alternative.
Native plants used:
Allium tricoccum
Boehmeria cylindrica
Monarda fistulosa
Other ingredients: baby kale, sissoo, Parmigiano Reggiano, maitake mushrooms, rosemary, thyme, miyokos butter, pasta water, pasta, nice olive oil
See below for how it went.
Was at the international grocery store yesterday and saw these tiny jackfruit. I asked the cashier if they were unripe jackfruit or dwarf jackfruit and she didn’t know… so I got one.
Opened it up and it was unripe. The seeds are soft, rubbery and a little watery so thought I’d try to see if it might make a cream alternative since I’m lactose intolerant.
This is what the seeds looks like peeled. The bruises oxidize and turn pinkish. They taste like an even more mild water chestnut.
First pic are the leaves used for sauce. Second pic is leaves added at end.
Sauce: ramp, thyme, rosemary, monarda
Leaves: baby kales of different cultivars, sissoo spinach and boehmeria
If it seems really random, I knocked off a twiglet of rosemary when I replanted it and I’m just using what’s available in the garden right now. Ramps will die back soon so might as well use them. *shrug*
This is what it looked like when stuck the seeds, herbs, nice olive oil in the food processor. It oxidized and turned out pinkish but you can’t tell that from the photo. It did come out fairly creamy and it mostly smelled of monarda even though I only used 3 leaves.
Other than that not pictured, I sautéed rehydrated maitake mushrooms in miyokos lightly salted butter and nice olive oil over low heat for around 5-7’, then added some pasta water, then added the sauce/seed mixture, cooked some more, and greens cooked for a while longer and then added cooked pasta, removed from heat and added Parmigiano Reggiano.
It tasted pretty good and was creamy. It didn’t have the thickness and heaviness of real dairy. It probably could have used more mushrooms too. The monarda stuck out a little bit but overall it was fine.
So…
I think unripe jackfruit seeds do make an ok alternative to cream. It doesn’t taste “fake” but is its own light thing.