The right way to eat a jackfruit

 

Yesterday, I went out for dinner with my friend Nana. The noodle restaurant was bustling. We were No. 8 on the waiting list. So we walked around and a small fruit shop next door attracted us. We went in and looked around, saw two boxes of processed fresh jackfruit conspicuously placing near the door. Nana had never tried it. I just tried once; it was with M. But we didn’t know the skill of eating it at that time. What I could remember was the procedure of how we fight with it, while the taste of it was vague.

Although there were many jackfruit trees in the city where my college was, I had never dared to try it although I had always been curious about it. It was such a big one as a washbasin with a lumpy appearance that I really didn’t know how to deal with it. Furthermore, I had a bad impression of it when I was a teenager: Once I traveled with a group of elder friends, an uncle who was usually sneered at by other people, bought a jackfruit. However, none of us knew how to eat, and when it was good enough to be eaten. So the uncle took it all the way, on the train, in the steamboat, until it gave off a terrible strong smell. Finally, the uncle had to throw it away under our booing. I was afraid I would make the same fool of myself with ridiculing, so I only dared to talk about again and again but never tried every time I saw jackfruits.

M picked one in the supermarket that day. He had never had it, but when we were together, we had the courage to try. Facing such a huge monster weighing more than ten pounds, we started our first exploration. Cutting the big strange fruit open, we just remembered a dense white fiber before our eyes. The fibers were moist, and there seemed to be some secretion. We tried and found that it was sticky and astringent. We looked at each other in speechless despair, wondering where the jackfruit got its good reputation. After an in-depth study, we found that the pulp was discontinuously distributed piece by piece and buried in dense and long fibers. So we started to look for the pulp with our bare hands, just like hunting for treasure in a tropical jungle unarmed. The long fiber was the rattan all over the space, and the hidden fruit fresh was the treasure buried by forty thieves. It was not much at first, but soon we felt that our hands were stuck with fibers and could not be opened. We had to put a wet cloth aside, wiped our hands from time to time, then continue to fight. When we found a clue, we dig out a large piece smoothly. Then we enjoyed the delicacy! What the experience the taste of the flesh gave us was far less than the process of treasure hunting. It was even more strong when half of the pulps were dug out that it became more and more difficult to find treasures in the jungle. This moment I called that I found one, and after a while, he declaimed he found one. We made up a story of ants while hunting for treasure and announced the complete elimination of the jackfruit after finally searching with both hands. We felt unwilling facing such a huge and messy outer shell—how could it be useless with half of the volume?

M went to the bathroom to wash his hands. When he was back, he laughed wildly and showed me his two lips. I could not stop laughing: his upper and lower lips pulled out a mouth of white silk!! Then I followed him, pursing my mouth, and two lips were glued together as expected. It suddenly dawned on me that this was how jackfruit’s name (in Chinese, it pronounces as Boluomi) came – silence is gold, silence is wisdom, silence depends on jackfruit (Bo Luo Mi sounds like Paramita) …

Until yesterday when I saw the clerk’s operation, I realized that the pulp of jackfruit was easier to be separated using a knife. For such a big jackfruit, the eatable clean pulp separated from which was not more than two small boxes. It was $10 a box! Nana tried a little and cried that it was delicious.

The separated pulp exuded an attractive aroma. I finally know how to enjoy the delicious jackfruit, but I will never share it with M.