Jackfruit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Juvy S. Iliwiliw


Tomato is commonly regarded as a vegetable, and is a familiar ingredient in savory dishes, sauces, and vegetable salads. But tomato, in fact, is a fruit. Surprisingly true and feel free to meet other fruits that get the veggie treatment.

Watermelon can add a new dimension of taste to your usual tinola. Watermelon rind, when grated, makes a delicious okoy. Unripe saging na saba is a key ingredient in pochero or nilagang baka. Bicolanos like to squeeze the liquid of santol flesh and cook it in coconut milk with siling labuyo. Green papaya is a traditional ingredient in tinola and achara. Guava gives a sweet-sour punch to the broth of siningang na bangus. Jicama or singkamas is the odd item among these fruits. A legume related to potatoes, this tuberous root vegetable is eaten more as a fruit here in the Philippines. Good as a healthy snack dipped in vinegar or salt, jicama is also mixed with other veggies as filling for fresh lumpia. In place of unripe tamarind, green mango can also be used as pang-asim to any sinigang dish.

Here is a classic recipe using jackfruit or langka, when ripe, can be a favorite ingredient to scent your ginataang halo-halo but in this recipe unripe jackfruit can be used for this classic Filipino favorite.

You will need:


1 small garlic, crushed

1 small onion, chopped

1 medium tomato in 2 tablespoons oil, chopped

1 cup cooked slices of pork

1/2 kilo unripe langka, chopped