Friday, July 25, 2014

Rai-Jamun in the monsoons!

The jamun-sellers are back! Yesterday I ate these sweet, slightly sour, happily purple jamuns.
Woman sitting near National Museum who sold us the jamuns
The fruits were sprinkled with kala namak (a type of rock salt)... yum! Apart from
being delicious the salt also counters the jamun's astringency.
These are rai jamuns (Syzigium nervosum), not to be confused with regular jamuns (Syzigium cumini). Rai jamun is a different species that has slightly bigger, more elongated fruits. The jamun wallahs call rai jamun "ashadiya jamun" because it ripens in Ashad (June-July). The regular jamun is called "jamoa" or "bhadoniya jamun", and ripens in Bhadon (August-September). Most of the trees in Lutyens' Delhi are jamuns, though rai jamuns line the lawns on both sides of Rajpath.

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