Want to taste the savory side of papaya? Try a kofta
Green papaya is not sweet and so it can play the role of a vegetable effortlessly.
And although it has its fair share of the pesky gelatinous seeds, the skin clings tightly to the flesh, making the fruit easier to peel with a vegetable peeler and then sliced, diced or shredded as need be.
Grated green papaya often shows up slaw-like in Thai salads and is tossed with tomatoes, long beans, peanuts, Thai chili pepper and light brown sugar along with splashes of fish sauce and squirts of lemon juice. The tropical fruit sportingly supports a balanced burst of tang, heat, sweet and umami in every bite.
When diced in cubes it can be used in stews along with tomato and onion or a blend of buttermilk, coconut, cumin seeds and black peppercorn. It is medically advised to cook unripe papaya as otherwise it could stimulate contractions for pregnant women.
When I was a young girl growing up in India, we had plenty of papaya trees in our garden and that meant we had papayas all the time. The unripe version would show up in salads seasoned with mustard seeds and chilies, deepfried fritters, curries and stews but because we had an abundance of them, my mother would just let most of them ripen and serve them anytime my twin and I would say we were hungry. So instead of a biscuit (as in cookie) or a fried snack that we hoped for, we would get slices of fresh papaya or have it pureed in milk and flavored with vanilla extract or cardamom powder.
I immensely despised the repeated appearance of the fruit
when it was ripe in whatever guise it appeared and would sulk all the more when my mother would talk me into eating it by comparing it to a mango. In my world, the mango was the king of fruits and papaya didn’t even belong in its court. Both fruits have a beautiful orange hue and can be intensely sweet but that’s where the similarities ended. I didn’t like the underlying taste of a papaya nor the smell, which I felt was like a tropical fruit on steroids.
To this day, I keep my distance from ripe papayas but have no qualms about the unripe ones. On a recent evening I stopped by Trader Joe’s, tired and hungry after a beastly long day at work, and picked up a box of vegetable biryani with dumplings from the frozen aisle. Halfway through my dinner, when I was in a zen state of mind, I started thinking of ways to put my homestyle spin on the tasty dumplings.
That’s when papaya, the verdant unripe one, came to mind and it’s probably because I saw it in the fruit section at the store. I thought its texture and ability to be a team player would make it a perfect candidate for a dumpling. And the papaya kofta was born.
A kofta is a spiced dumpling/meatball that is usually made with ground meat but can be made with diced/ grated vegetables or cooked lentils, and the variations are endless.
In the past, I have made vegetarian koftas with grated carrots, beets and onion or with yam and onion. Sometimes I have mixed the vegetables with chickpea and rice flours to make the kofta crisp and other times I have added chickpea flour and panko breadcrumbs instead.
Although koftas can be served in a tomato-based sauce, I liked the TJ style of serving them with rice and find the following ones all work well: Cumin rice: In a wok, heat 1 tablespoon of oil and then add 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and 1 teaspoon freshly crushed black peppercorns. Once the cumin turns slightly brown, add ½ cup of green peas and saute for 2 minutes. Then turn off the heat. Add 2 cups of cooked long-grain rice and salt to tasteand stir until combined.
Coconut rice: In a wok, heat 1 tablespoon of oil. Add ½ teaspoon mustard seeds and 1 teaspoon yellow split peas. Once seeds start spluttering, add 1 tablespoon whole cashew nuts. After 2 minutes, add 2 dried red chilies, broken in half. Once they start turning brown, add ¾ cup grated fresh coconut and salt to taste. Stir-fry for about 3 minutes. Turn off heat. Add 2 cups of cooked rice and stir until combined.
Vegetable biryani: Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven. Add 1 large onion, thinly sliced, and 3 cloves of minced garlic. Add 1 teaspoon each of ground cumin, garam masala and ground cinnamon. Add 2 carrots, cut into sticks and ½ cup lima beans, and saute for 1 minute. Add 3 chopped plum tomatoes. Add salt to taste and combine well. Add 2 cups basmati rice and 4 cups water. Cover pot and cook on medium heat. Stir once after 10 minutes, making sure not to mush the rice. Cook covered for another 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer rice to 13-by-9-inch pan and let it cool.
A lazy way out is to place the koftas on a platter after they are deep-fried until golden brown, and eat them just as they are — crisp on the outside and soft inside.