Breadfruit

For this week’s edition of “What the Hell is This?” I reached into a garbage can filled with water and floating green objects that were about the size of a large grapefruit. Due to a language barrier between the store clerk and myself, I had no idea if what I was buying was a fruit or a vegetable, but for less than two dollars I figured the risk was worth it. It took twenty minutes of typing various combinations of the words “dominican republic green fruit vegetable” into Google before I realized two things:
1.) What I had bought was a Breadfruit
2.) I need to buy “Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables” by
E. Schneider

The Breadfruit I bought was mature, but not ripe. Raw, it had an aroma somewhere between a pumpkin and a melon. The inside texture was squash-like. Its starchy nature is often compared to the potato but the texture is different – the Breadfruit floats. I cut it in half and peeled it (this required a knife; a potato peeler couldn’t get through the thick skin). I put half in the oven to bake and half on the stove to boil. Twenty minutes later, inexplicably, I started craving cinnamon rolls. I sniffed the air. It smelled like a bakery in my apartment. Egad! A baking breadfruit smells like bread! This moment of discovery made me remember why I love working with food. As an adult, how often do we really get to experience completely new things? But if you step in a kitchen or sit down at a table, it can happen all the time. In this case it was touching, smelling and tasting something I had never experienced before. Other times it's about tasting something normal, like a pork chop, in a whole new way. You can eat a hundred pork chops, then one day someone cooks it in way you’ve never thought of and it’s like your tasting pork chops again for the first time. But I digress…The flavor of the breadfruit, unfortunately, was less memorable than the aroma, slightly sweet and very bland. Recipes indicate its best mixed with a rich and flavorful ingredient, like sausage, butter and even coconut milk. You can learn more about how to cook it from The Breadfruit Cookbook and you can learn other uses for Breadfruit, like spackling canoes with its sap, from The Breadfruit Institute.