A rare Indian fruit!

Hi folks!

I am back after a long time...

Today I want to share something different from the usual. It is about food (yay!!). I must tell you that I am a voracious eater :P. I love to taste different dishes from all over the world, especially the unusual and not-so-popular ones. However, my first post here on food is about a rare and unusual fruit available in India. Today from the local market of Bhadreswar (Hooghly, West Bengal, India) my dad bought two unfamiliar, almost spherical, greenish white fruits. Neither me, nor my sis had ever seen it before. Even my mom could not identify it. The fruits were a bit wider around the rim horizontally and the top and bottom surfaces were almost flat, making them easier to sit on plane surface. I asked my father what is it. He said, "It is called Golap Jamun." The inside was hollow and when he broke one, the uneven, round, loose wood-coloured seed came out. The seed looked like a small betel nut. I tasted the fruit and it was surprisingly sweet and had a slight hint of rose flavour. The texture of the flesh was soft and juicy. My mom exclaimed that she had seen the fruit once or twice in her childhood and after that it was completely lost. Thus she had almost forgotten how it looked like! Dad also said that it has become very rare these days, and can be found in the market briefly in the spring time. The vendor had only 6-8 of these fruits in his van and dad bought two of them for Rs. 5/- each for me and my sister. Then I searched in the Internet and came across a post by Chowder Singh from NDTV Foods, mentioning a similar experience he had with this fruit in Kolkata. The fruit is not much popular in India, but the name Gulab Jamun (Rose Apple in English) is known to all, since it is a famous dessert dish here. The fruit had a light rosy smell and hence the name Gulab Jamun. I took pictures of the other fruit and the seed which I am posting alongside. Now I am pretty curious about this newly-found fruit of mine! Please leave your comments if you know more about the fruit, its plantation, characteristics and nutritional values. Share the post if you like it and want to encourage others for its plantation. Next time when I will hear the name Gulab Jamun, I will surely remember this fruit before visualising a bowl of piping hot syrup dipped sweets of the same name!

The Gulab Jamun fruit The seed