Malleswaram, a suburb of north-west Bangalore whose history dates back to late nineteenth century, is one of the very few places that still retains some reminiscence of the old world charm of this garden city. One attraction of Malleswaram is the bustling Sunday bazar of fruits and vegetables where you may stumble upon some rare and seasonal veggies that never show up in the superstores of the IT Capital of India. Sanjit loves to fish around the swarm and most Sundays he comes back with something rare and exotic in his net. By the time he reaches home invariably the Kannada name has slipped out of his memory chip that he learnt from the seller when conversing with his terrific Kannada knowledge! Being clueless, I start asking our neighbor, neighbor's cook, neighbor's maid .... sometimes that solves the problem, sometimes I just get a little clue and take a final refuge to google uncle!
Few weeks back Sanjit came home with a bag of small unripe berries. They were mostly green in color but few of them had a reddish hue. Almost clueless, the size and shape gave us a faint idea that it may be karamcha. But my only encounter with karamcha was with those bright red "cherries" in glass jars available in almost all grocery shops in Kolkata in our childhood. Being ignorant about its original source in that "pre-google" era, it was innocently used as a topping for dessert and cake. Only much later we learned that these cherries are nothing but karamcha boiled in sugar syrup with some poisonous red color. I have never seen the real fruit and google image search was showing some red and white colored fruit as karamcha but ours were mostly green with a touch of red. We tried to eat it raw but OMG, they were super tart in taste! In this phase of confusion (and negligence) the fruits passed almost three weeks, first in the open then in refrigerator. Desperate, I decided to make a chutney and took them out! By that time most of them have changed their color to reddish maroon .... they actually ripened inside the fridge! I boiled a handful in the pressure cooker. After opening the lid, I saw a very nice pinkish red liquid and immediately decided to try a jam. So happy that I did it! The jam came out with a very gorgeous color and texture! Here is the recipe ..... if you can call it a recipe at all!
Karamcha (Natal Plum) Jam Recipe
Karamcha or Koronda - 2/3 cup (approx) .... I didn't measure
Sugar - 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoon
Method:
- Boil the fruits in approx. 1/4 cup water. I pressure cooked on low flame for one whistle.
- Let it cool down. Now take the whole thing on a strainer on top of a bowl. Mash it well by hand. strain the liquid and fruit pulps. Discard the seeds and peels.
- In the meantime, keep a small bowl of water in refrigerator to chill.
- After straining I got around 1/2 cup pulp. For jam, the general rule is to use equal quantity of sugar. But as the fruits were very very tart I used 3/4 cup of sugar to start with and then added another 2 tablespoons later.
- Take the pulp and sugar in a saucepan and boil on high heat till the sugar melts. You can also add a pinch of salt to balance the taste. Now reduce the heat and keep stirring. After sometime (5-6 mins) the mixture will start to thicken. Keep stirring and check the consistency. It should neither be very runny nor solid like jam. Keep in mind that it will thicken a lot when cooled.
- Now to check if it is ready, take the small bowl of chilled water from refrigerator and put a drop of jam in it. If it settles immediately underneath the bowl, then your jam is ready. Otherwise cook for some more time and check again.
- Let it cool down slightly, then pour in sterilized glass container. (As I made a small batch, I didn't care to sterilize the glass bottle .... just cleaned it with hot water and soda and then dried in sun). I kept the jam refrigerated.
Serving Suggestion:
Serve with bread, biscuits or crackers. Or just roll your chapati or paratha with this gorgeous sweet and sour jam for a fruity end of your meal.
Notes:
- If your fruits are not super sour in taste, then start with equal amount of sugar as the pulp and increase the quantity according to your taste.
- Generally, I use lemon juice and/or peel in the sugar-pulp mixture to add natural pectin to it. But I skipped that as the fruits were .... you know :) very very tart! But it thickened very nicely. Later I found that natal plum contains lots of pectin and accordingly is a useful ingredient in jelly, jam, syrup and chutney ..... good to know!
- The scientific name of this fruit is Carissa Carandas. Common names in English include Bengal currant, Christ's thorn, Carandas plum and Karanda. Some other names are karamcha (Bengali), kararmarda (Gujarati), balalak (Hindi), karekayi (Kannada), karakka (Malayalam), sushena (Oriya), karamarda(Sanskrit) etc.
- The karonda fruit is a rich source of iron and contains a fair amount of Vitamin C and, therefore, is very useful for the cure of anemia and has antiscorbutic (counteracting scurvy) properties. The unripe fruit is sour, astringent, bitter, and is useful in the treatment of diarrhoea, anorexia and intermittent fevers. The ripe fruit is sweet, cooling, appetizer. It is useful in treatment of anorexia, burning sensation, biliousness, skin diseases, scabies, pruritus etc. For more medicinal properties check the links below.
- According to this link if eaten before fully ripe, a bitter, poisonous latex is released from the skin. Other than the ripe fruit, the plant is poisonous. Even The green fruit is poisonous, sometimes dangerously so. I don't know if that is applicable for this variety ..... when boiling and mashing the fruits I noticed some sticky residue (latex) in the pot and in my hand but that never resulted in any irritation!
Resources:
http://findmeacure.com/2008/07/16/karonda-bengali-karamcha/
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/karanda-rural-indias-rich-fruit-13331
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa_carandas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carissa
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