Breakfast Vegetables

Plantains and raw bananas are for cooking, they're not sweet. And depending on how fresh (hard) they are, you will have to boil them first to soften them and to remove the skin, after that you can slice, season and dip in batter and deep fry.

I'm craving that now.....

Donkeystone, ripe plantains can be peeled, sliced (we do it on the diagonal of the fruit's length) then fried. No prior cooking. And we can find them frequently, in Cape Breton-- not the plantain centre of the universe.

Yeh that's how I bought them when I lived in London, they were so ripe the skin was almost black, not that it affected the fruit though. Where I live now, they tend to be short and stubby and are very hard when fresh and have to be boiled to be able to peel them, I never see any ripe raw bananas.

*Donkeystone....

I had no luck finding the breadfruit.
Drew a total blank.

What do you mean by raw bananas, donkeystone? An't most bananas sold there raw?

I've had gudeg yogya. In Yogya. Good but not as great as it was hyped up to be. The fried chicken on the road out to Prambanan was better.

Weaver, as you may know it was Captain William Bligh who first brought breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies, where the authorities hoped it would serve as a cheap food for the slaves on the sugar plantations.

That was on his second attempt. The first attempt ran into trouble.

The only places I can suggest would be Afro Caribbean / Asian stores in Cheetham hill, Rusholme, Fallowfield and Alexandra Park (Moss side). Have you tried Wing Yip on Oldham road or the Chinese supermarkets on George st. China town or there's a bloke on the corner of High and Church street who sell a lot of stuff you don't normally see, also the scruffy bit in the Arndale centre near that over priced fishmonger.

In case you need to know what it looks like, it's the size of a large mango with bright green nobbly skin.

Donkeystone, Jamaican breadfruit are rarely smaller than a North American football (with thefootball's ends cut off.) It's almost completely round except for the variety that is slightly elongated and more oval. But they are substantially larger than even the largest mangos.

It was just to give a rough idea, they're about football size in some of Londons China town supermarkets, but I doubt they will be in Manchester, I saw some jackfruit on sale in a store on George st. M/C, it was approx 6 pieces of flesh wrapped in cling film for like £3 or so. The problem with breadfruit is it doesn't keep for long and I don't think there is a big market for it North of Watford.