Breadfruit Kappas: A Gateway Dish to the Delicious World of Breadfruit
Fleshy, with an extraordinary ability to pick up flavours, breadfruit may just be the most versatile fruit in your kitchen.
This beautiful green fruit grows mostly along the south and west coast of India, particularly in Kerala, and along the Konkan belt. It is well suited to moderate and temperate climes, and bears fruits from March through to end of the monsoons.
Breadfruit, owing to its fleshy sponginess, serves as the perfect alternative to fried fish on vegetarian days, and lends a lovely meatiness to vegetable curries. It can also be used in seafood dishes, especially with clams — the flavours are vivid and bright.
It does well in both savoury and sweet dishes; from chips and kappas (slices of breadfruit, marinated in chilli and turmeric, and rawa-fried to perfection), to vegetables sides, sambar and even as breadfruit biryani.
If you find breadfruit on your trip to the vegetable market, bring back a little, and try your hand at a recipe or two. I can promise you, it’ll be the beginning of a long love affair.
Recipe: Breadfruit Kappas
Ingredients
500 grams breadfruit steaks, cut into 2 cms thickness and quartered
2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp sambar powder
Juice of 1/2 lime
Salt to taste
1/2 cup fine rawa or semolina
Any vegetable oil for frying
Method
Take a breadfruit and cut it lengthwise. Remove the green tough skin with a sharp knife. Apply oil on your palms to prevent stickiness. Cut the halves into slices of 1.5-2 cms in thickness and wash them thoroughly in water.
Dry each slice gently with a paper towel, and rub with red chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt and sambar powder.
Squeeze some lime juice on the slices and keep covered for 30 minutes.
Keep a plate of rawa ready to coat the breadfruit slices before frying.
On a hot tawa, drizzle a bit of oil. When it is hot and shimmering, coat each slice with rawa and place gently in the sizzling oil.
Place as many as you can without crowding the tawa, then turn the flame on low, sprinkle some water on top of the slices. (As breadfruit is a tough vegetable, the water creates steam to help it cook through.)
Cover the tawa with a lid, and leave on low flame for a good 10-12 minutes per side.
Insert a knife gently into a slice to make sure it has cooked well.
Now remove from heat, and eat it hot with a squeeze of lime.
Follow Arati’s work here.
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