On the haat-bar local farmers come with their freshly picked produces to the small farmers' market and a good part of them are the tribal Khasi girls who come from the nearby Khasiapunji (land of the Khasi tribe) ...they are simple looking people with a cheerfuller face and sweet smile.
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| A Khasi woman on her way back from market |
As we were strolling through the market we found that the most common produces they came with were paan, supari, wild turmeric and all sorts of banana products that either they grow in their villages or collect from nearby forests. There were some new stuffs as well ..... we found quite a few varieties of beans that I have never seen earlier. While looking at these new veggies we spotted a handful of tiny tomato like things with one girl. On our query she smiled and spoke a few words in her local language. What we could gather from her that the fruits have been collected from joom farming of a nearby hill. We got interested and feeling obliged by her charming smile Sanjit took whatever she had in her basket.....a generous fistful .... that's all she had.
On our query back home our Didimoni (sister) told that these are called tit-begun. So essentially these are miniature brinjals with a bitter taste. These are wild fruits and nobody seems much exited about it! My MIL then and there declared that she is not going to taste a bitter tasting brinjal (though she loves neem-begun which is essentially brinjal cooked with neem leaves to make it bitter :)). So we packed them in our luggage and when I finally got a chance to attend, they were more than a week old and beyond their prime time. All got red and crinkled ..... anyway we wanted to give it a try and decided to cook a simple stir-fry with onion- tomato-green chill to offset the otherwise bitter taste.
I googled a bit to find the English name, but got confused with one of its close cousin named cluster eggplant or turkey berry. I tasted turkey berry earlier (courtesy our Navadarshanam CSA box) and found them of much smaller size than this one. Found a web link where they have used the same botanical name (Solanum indica) to describe the fruit that looked like turkey berry(Solanum torvum) to me! HELP needed!
What I gathered (I may be wrong though) that in English it is called Likok or bitter brinjal, in Assamese tit-begun and in Sikkimese beeh .
A Simple Bitter-brinjal Stir-Fry Recipe
Ingredients:
Bitter Brinjal - Handful. sliced
Onion - One small, sliced
Tomato - One ripe, sliced
Green Chilli - one, chopped
Panchphoron - 1/2 teaspoon
Dry red chilli - one
Oil - 1 tablespoon
Turmeric - 1/4 teaspoon
Salt and Sugar - to taste
