Artocarpus heterophyllus

I'm constantly amazed by my love for jackfruits, it's a mildly baffling kind of love. I can't stand the smell or eat a lot of it when it's ripe but it's like hormones, you eat too much and get pimples and a bad stomach. And since it's smelly and yellow and prickly nothing at all in history can be said in defence of this... smelly yellow prickly thing, except for the jackfruit halwa I grew up on and have missed unfailingly and intensely these past six years. And the jackfruit pickle my grandma used to make, and every raw jackfruit preparation within the limits of keralite cuisine, plus jackfruit fritters and kathal kofta and chakka varatiyathu and elayada with jackfruit jelly in it and masala curry and enchorer kalia (which is one of the reasons I like Bengali vegetarian food more than the meat) and, and, and, jackfruit and mango salad with limejuice and red chilli powder. The last one's the bomb.

And last night I dreamt about a jackfruit, but that's not really important.

Wow, twenty ands.