Breadfruit, the Holy Grail of Grocery Shopping
About a month ago, one of our editors asked me if I could write a brief web piece on cooking with breadfruit, to accompany an upcoming piece about Jamaica in the magazine’s travel issue (now online).
“Sure,” I said, after a little Googling to determine what the heck a breadfruit is. They grow on a tree in the mulberry family, and have edible white flesh that’s soft and slightly sweet when fully ripe, or starchy and potato-like when under-ripe.
Breadfruit, courtesy Flickr user library_dragon
Breadfruit only grows in tropical climates, which D.C. is not (although it can certainly feel like one in August), but I figured I could find one at an ethnic foods market or maybe even the normal grocery store. I mean, we have easy access to other tropical fruits like mangoes, coconuts, plantains and papayas—how hard could it be?
Answer: Pretty darn hard.
I started at the chain supermarkets in my neighborhood, then expanded my search to Whole Foods and organic markets. No luck.
I thought I had hit a lucky break when a nice woman who heard I was looking for breadfruit told me her sister in Puerto Rico could supply it.
“I’ll ask her to send me a box tomorrow; she does it all the time and it usually only takes a day or two,” the woman promised me. (I’ll keep her nameless, since I’m not too sure it’s legal to import fruit that way.)
I called her a few days later. Any breadfruit?
“No, not yet. Maybe tomorrow,” she said.
Same answer the next day, and the next day, and the next…as far as know, that’s still the answer, though I’ve stopped pestering the poor woman.
In the meantime, I called up any ethnic foods markets I could find phone numbers for in the greater D.C. area. Most conversations went something like this:
Me: “I’m looking for something called a breadfruit…do you sell breadfruit?”
(Silence.)
Me (mangling the pronunciation of a list of alternate names for breadfruit): “Panna fruta? Fruta pao? Pan de palo? Ulu? Suku? Fruta de pan?”
Store person: “You want fruit or bread?”
And so it went. My hopes soared temporarily when I called one little market. Someone put me on hold and went hunting through the store for something matching what I described. When she came back to the phone empty-handed, she asked me to describe it again, then stopped me mid-sentence.
“Oh, is it something fresh?” she asked. “We don’t sell anything fresh.”
I restrained myself from suggesting that they should make that their store’s new slogan, and dialed one more place, a large international supermarket that a friend had recommended. It wasn’t close by, but I was a day away from deadline, and still had no breadfruit to cook with.
After two comically mangled conversations with cashiers, and far too many minutes (at least two) on hold with Vanilla Ice music, I finally reached a guy in the store’s produce department. As I recited the list of breadfruit’s foreign names, one of them hit the mark.
“Fruta de pan! Yes, yes, fruta de pan!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I know it!”
“That’s great!” I said. “So, you have it there?”
Pause.
“No. Not now,” he said.
I was afraid to ask, but I did…when did he expect to have it?
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
In the end, I interviewed a leading authority on breadfruit, Diane Ragone of The Breadfruit Institute, which is part of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Hawaii. Here’s the article that resulted, with recipes that make my mouth water. I can make one… maybe tomorrow.
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Try Grand Mart in 7 Corners(http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/172913) or H Mart in Wheaton. I think I’ve seen it at Great Wall recently (http://www.gw-supermarket.com/). I’m pretty sure if they have live bull frogs and soft-shelled turtles, (yes, a little sad, but if u eat cow burgers, don’t judge), they are likely to have breadfruit. I know they have Jack Fruit, and have the pics to prove it: http://twitpic.com/as6wb.
Comment by Marc B. — August 25, 2009 @ 5:42 pm
i love the conversations you had with these people, amanda. especially the lady whose grocery store doesn’t sell anything fresh. good luck getting some of this breadfruit in the future. maybe you and “C” should take a trip to Puerto Rico? i had the best fried chicken i’ve ever had there…maybe you can track that down for a blog?
Comment by bryn — August 25, 2009 @ 7:37 pm
Mom and I were just talking about jackfruit (a cousin of breadfruit or perhaps the same thing) today! She brought me a can of it back from her trip to North Carolina. I can’t imagine canning jackfruit but I guess they do it. We’re planning to crack open the tin at a family gathering and reminisce about eating it in Afria.
Comment by Heather L. — August 25, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
try Jamaican markets; should be some in DC
Comment by HYACINTH MCCAULAY — August 27, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
Hi.
I get my fresh breadfruit at Red Apple Market, which is in Maryland, on route 650 just a bit south of 193. (That’s New Hampshire Ave, I think, just south of University Blvd.) Red Apple doesn’t always have breadfruit, only once in a while, but they do carry it. You just have to keep going until you find it.
I like to cook it by putting it into a bed of coals and turning it ’round and ’round, until it is charred all over and steam comes out the stem end. If it isn’t fully ripe, it smells and tastes about the way I remember my mom’s French toast from when I was a kid, though not as eggy.
Referring to Heather L.’s comment — Jackfruit is _Artocarpus_heterophyllus_, a close relative of breadfruit; it comes in two varieties. One is [merely] a rather large fruit; the other is the largest tree fruit known today.
You can occasionally get fresh jackfruit (the big kind) at various Asian markets in the area, and I finally found the smaller kind, just a couple days ago, at Song Que Deli, in the Eden Center (7 Corners, Virginia). This is the first time I’ve ever seen it in the flesh.
Some Asian markets have frozen ripe jackfruit, but I don’t think I’ve seen green jackfruit that way, only in cans or when somebody opens a fresh jackfruit before it has had a chance to ripen.
Cheers –
jon
Comment by Jon Singer — September 1, 2009 @ 5:32 pm
I left Puerto Rico in 1954, and although I’ve kept my island culinary traditions alive, I can’t say that I’ve ever been able to buy breadfruit stateside. I used to get frozen breadfruit “tostones” (like the plantain ones, but made with breadfruit) from my mother occasionally, but not since she passed away. I think part of the problem is that breadfruit does not travel well, and either goes ripe too quickly or gets bruised and goes bad. Could also be the fact that I lived for years in Minnesota and Iowa and now live in Texas. I still remember breadfruit as a treat, though!
Comment by Luis Torres — September 5, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
I recently went on a similar quest for breadfruit, suit and armor galloping in my 2002 Camry through Northern VA and calling DC and MD places with similar responses so I know exactly what the author means. I finally found breadfruit in the Litwin’s Market, 8th and Elm, Camden, NJ. Only 3 left and starting to rippen. Bought them anyway. More coming “ma~nana.” Glad to hear there are other places nearby that bring them occasionally.
I peeled it sliced it and took out the stem, boiled it lightly and mash it with olive oil, garlic, oregano, cilantro, pork rind and “adobo-salt” Stuffed it with chorizos and baked it. Ate with tilapia. Next morning, pressed a large spoon on the top of left over breadfruit “rellenos” to flatten it a bit, put and egg in the depression and fried it, breakfast of champions!
Comment by Juan — September 8, 2009 @ 7:57 am
I have seen breadfruit in many Jamaican food stores in Brooklyn
Comment by Winston Carroo — September 18, 2009 @ 11:54 am
[...] husk. I don’t know; I’ve never had a chance to try it (and I’m guessing that, like breadfruit, fresh durian may be hard to come by in DC). But now I know not to try it while [...]
Pingback by Death by Durian Fruit? | Food & Think — September 29, 2009 @ 9:41 am
Hi again.
I bought a fresh breadfruit this afternoon at Red Apple Market. (That’s on 650 just south of 193, inside the Beltway in Maryland.) There were over a dozen of them, so if you are quick you can probably get one.
Cheers –
jon
Comment by jon singer — October 8, 2009 @ 4:01 pm