great indian dishes and the national fruit of bangladesh

Originally this meal was going to be a variety of veggie dishes, but my parents came and brought steak with them. Of this I'm thankful because the three dishes were not enough for everyone...and the steak was really good. (I could be a vegetarian if it wasn't for steak. I just get an unquenchable craving for it periodically. I think it's my body's "you need more iron" alarm. Anway...)

We had this really yummy and simple rice with peas (can't remember the name), beets simply simmered in indian spices (no name recollection here, either) and a seared cauliflower of which the name escapes me.  All three were really, really good, with the winner being the cauliflower. And all three can be found in Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking or Simple Indian Cookery.

We also picked up a 15lb jackfruit from the Asian grocery a few days prior. A jackfruit is the largest tree-born fruit in the world. (Growing up to 80 lbs on trees that can be 100 feet tall...you don't want to spend a lot of time under one.) After a little youtube research, we decided to face the spiky gargatu-fruit head on.

First, we sliced it in half. (In the picture, below, my knife is pointing to the fruit.) All those sliced seeds are surrounded by large fruits of deliciousness. The center is inedible, but the strange, strand-like things surrounding the fruits are used as a vegetable. (We didn't use it, though.) The jackfruit is like a fig in that the flower is on the inside. Strange, huh?

After an hour of chopping and ripping and popping and making a whole lot of mess, we ended up with five pounds of fruit. Not bad. We were planning on roasting the seeds, but that didn't happen. (We forgot about them and they went bad.) They are supposed to taste like a bland chestnut. I'm still upset we didn't do it. Maybe next time.

The fruit was very, very good. It tasted like a mango and a pineapple had a kid. That mangapple kid got together with a banana and they had a kid. And that banamangapple kid would be the delicious jackfruit.

The fruits of our labor (he he): seeds, fruits and debris.

Warning: Jackfruit can emit a very sticky, milky, sap stuff. To clean it off, use oil. Soap won't touch it. Oil before you cut and to clean off everything at the end.