At the Suva central market, I’m always fascinated by the patience of the ladies cleaning and chopping huge jackfruits. It’s so convenient to buy it ready to cook, so it becomes the perfect choice for when you don’t have a lot of time for meal prep.
I prefer cooking jackfruit only for a few minutes to keep a firmer texture. Cooking it for a short time will also help preserve its vitamin C (that is easily lost during the cooking process).
Ingredients:
– 120 g of jackfruit
– 2 garlic cloves
– 1-2 chilies
– ½ onion
– 3 tbsp. of pea or chickpea flour
– 9 tbsp. of water
– oil
– 1 pinch of salt
Directions:
1) Stir-fry the jackfruit for 10-15 min on high flame in 1 tsp. of oil and stir regularly. Set aside until it cools down.
2) In the meantime, pour around 9 tbsp. of water in 3 tbsp. of pea or chickpea flour to prepare the batter.
3) Add the jackfruit, chopped garlic, chillies, onion and a pinch of salt and mix well. This should be enough to prepare 4 small fritters like the ones in the picture.
4) In a non-stick pan, heat 1 tsp. of oil on medium flame and start cooking two of the fritters. Change immediately to low heat and turn the fritters around a few times to prevent them from burning and sticking. Press well the fritters with a spatula to make sure the interior is well cooked (under-cooked chickpea flour doesn’t taste very nice, so let’s make sure we cook it well 😊).
5) Cook each fritter for at least 10 minutes until golden brown.
Jackfruit is a good source of dietary fiber, magnesium, potassium, calcium, iron and vitamin C.
TIP: Chickpea flour is a great egg replacer so we can use it to reduce the content of fat and cholesterol of some of our recipes.