I’m a big foodie and love discovering new things, but when I tucked into some Mixed Pickle with my curry the other night I was surprised to see one of the main ingredients was something I didn’t recognise.
Amongst the chunks of sweet, curried fruit and veg were several unusual green berries – about the size and shape of a caper, but much harder and revealing a dark red centre when cut open. The mixed pickle in question was from leading curry sauce and condiment maker Patak’s, which lists the mystery fruit as Karamdas.
The curious thing is though, the word ‘karamda’ has virtually no results when you search for it online. Luckily Wikipedia has the answer: Patak’s seems to have bastardised the Carissa Carandas fruit and invented its own iteration of the various words for it.
In English it’s sometimes called the crane berry, and is used commonly in Asia in pickle due to its abundance of the naturally occurring gelling agent pectin. As for taste, the jury is out, but in a highly-spiced and sugary mix the texture is the key element, on which it more than delivers.