CEKODOK SUKUN

The bread fruit or sukun is normally cut into thin slices and fried. But, what do you do with the fruit when it is ripe? Some of you might have tried this before, or have in fact done it often  - turning it into bread fruit fritter or cekodok sukun. (By the way, can you call cekodok fritter?)

When a sukun fruit is ripe, its flesh will be soft and aromatic. Cut the fruit into two halves. Then, discard the hempulur that looks like a hairy sausage in the middle. It can be pulled out easily, but not when the fruit is still green. You must make sure that your sukun has not gone bad.

Then, scoop out the soft flesh as much as you need. An equal amount of wheat flour, a pinch of salt, and a little amount of sugar, will then have to be gently mixed with the sukun flesh. That's your fritter mash, ready to be fried!

The result of my second attempt, making the cekodok sukun recently, was more satisfying. I think it was because I added a little bit of sodium bicarbonate into the fritter mixture. That made my cekodok sukun taste a bit like the American do-nut! The little sugar added into the mash must have also made the cekodok tastier.

Frankly, I have never heard or thought about cekodok sukun before. The first time I made it, it was because I didn't want to throw away the sukun that my neighbour gave me, which I should have fried much earlier, when it was still green! And I was also quite curious whether ripe sukun could be used to make cekodok, just like ripe bananas.

Some of you might have tried preparing lots of other stuff using ripe sukun. But some, probably,  might not have even seen or tasted the sukun fruit!