Happy New Year 2023 and Happy Veganuary! Being vegan in January has become a recent trend. I guess everything is about following trend. Anyway, with or without being a part of the recent trend, I am writing today my first recipe of 2023. It is a recipe of green papaya or pepe (পেঁপে ) as we call it in Bengali. Papaya is a very common fruit and easily grown in Bangladesh, although it was introduced from South America by Spanish people almost 400 years ago to South Asia.

Green Papaya has lots of benefits. It helps you in digestion, constipation and inflammation. Green papaya soup is eaten as a staple by people who has been sick or ill. Other than that, it is a fabulous vegetable that you can have it often to improve your skin, digestion and infection.

Papaya is not grown in Denmark, so I bought it from a Turkish shop, as I do for most of the Bangladeshi vegetables. You need the very basic ingredients to make this – turmeric powder, onion, salt and chili. However, I used nigella seeds because I think it goes really well with green papaya plus nigella seeds are full of medicinal value.

You need to be bit careful when you cut papaya. It is full of seeds, which is very slimy and bitter, so be careful when you scoop out all seeds with a spoon. Otherwise you will find bitter seeds everywhere in your kitchen or may be in your food too!

When you scoop out the seeds, you will see some remaining white thingy hanging inside. You must remove those bad boys because those white thingy are immature seeds, waiting there to spoil your food. They are super bitter and no amount of cooking or seasoning them will reduce their bitterness. So what I do is just peel or shave them vigorously, so there’s no sign of white parts inside. You want to peel the skin of papaya too because it is also very bitter.

You need to heat oil in a deep frypan, and then add nigella seeds to heated oil. We call it ‘phoron deya’ which basically means season the oil before adding any other ingredients.

After adding nigella seeds, you add sliced onion and cook until they are very lightly golden colour and then add sliced papaya. I usually don’t brown the onion for this recipe because it does not go with the taste or color of papaya.

With papaya, you add turmeric powder, salt and sliced chili. You can also add coriander or cumin powder but I don’t do loads of spice to this recipe.

Mix and coat everything well and cover the pot with lid to cook them in a very low temperature. Remember that papaya is hard vegetable that means it has very low water content, almost like a carrot. So either you can add some water or let them cook in low heat so it can get cooked with its own water. I usually don’t add extra water because it makes them soggy but if you are in a hurry you are welcome to do so.

After 15 minutes of cooking in a low heat, take off the lid and stir them.You can see that half of them got translucent already. At this point you can cover and cook for 10 more minutes.

Papaya is almost cooked at this point as all of them are translucent and oils are oozing out from them. So you can either stop now or let them cook a bit more.

Recipe: 4-5 servings Prepping time: 10min, Cooking time: 30min

Ingredients: 1 big green papaya 1 big onion Spices and condiments: 1 Tsp Turmeric powder 5g whole nigella seed 1 tbsp salt Green Chilies to taste oil

Instructions: 1. Peel papaya and carefully take out all seeds and white parts from inside. Slice them thin. 2. Heat vegetable oil in medium temperature and add nigella seeds when oil is warm. 3. Add onion and cook until slightly golden. 4. Add sliced papaya, salt, turmeric powder and chili. Stir well to mix everything. Cover and let it cook for 15min in low heat. 5. Cook until all papaya is translucent and cooked. Serve with plain rice or ruti.