With a Little Help From My Friends

Each year, there always seems to be ONE culinary item that is that particular year's "Culinary Holy Grail." Last year it was romanescu cauliflower, which I found PRECISELY ONE TIME at my local farmer's market. This year's holy grail is kadampuli, aka cambodge, gamboge, or kodukkai puli.

For more deets: http://blog.sigsiv.com/2008/04/kudampuli-gambooge.html

Living in the NYC metro area, virtually everything is at our finger tips here. If not in the burbs, definitely in NYC itself. So imagine my frustration when a trip to Kalustyans turned up an empty spot on a shelf where the kodampuli should have been.

Feelers have been sent out to friends in CA and WA, as well as a cousin of the husband who is in India visiting family, all in search of this elusive fruit.

Many thanks to a friend in San Francisco who sent me a generous supply, enough to keep me going for a while. The cousin will no doubt return from India with a lovely supply too. So I'm looking forward to that, and looking forward to finding out other ways in which to use this fruit besides Kerala fish curries (tho to be honest, the next recipe will be one involving mango and kadampuli and prawns--I cannot wait). I also suspect that sambar would benefit from this fruit too, so that's on the agenda at some point.


I joke about these looking like cat turds, and they DO, don't they! They have a smokey, pungent raisin-meets-prune kind of smell to them. I can't wait to use them.