Njarapazham Clafoutis

I will admit, it gives me a certain devilish pleasure to introduce a dish with a name like this one–part Tamil, part Malayalam, part French, something of a tongue-twister, all Pâticheri. Two halves to this: the fruit, which is local, wild, Tamil, and the dish which is from the central-southern French region of Limousin–from the Occitan word “clafir,” meaning “to fill.” Whether it’s the dish being filled with fruit, or the gaps between the fruit being filled with poured-on batter, I’m not sure. But the clafoutis is a simple, classic, beloved dessert that’s a cross between a fruit tart and an egg custard–the sort one whips up in a pinch, most especially in the summers when stone fruits are plentiful. And one must get one’s … fill *cough*

So then in the heart of erstwhile French India, which the French might still want to think is French India, it makes sense to lay claim to this dessert with a local, wild black plum–one of our few native stone fruits this far south of the Himalayas. I’ve written before about the naaval pazham, the jamoon or the Malabar plum as it’s known: Syzygium cumini. We make a drink of this every summer, a fruity variant of the jal jeera and it’s both body coolant and digestive–though its might be attractive for just its rich color alone.

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We’ve frozen it into fancy slushies which you might think of turning into daiquiris or, with the salt-friendliness of this drink, margaritas.

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But now as I say it was the turn of something warm and comforting and French, and the wild cousin of the Syzygium cumini, the local njara pazham. Now it’s not uncommon for local Pondicherrians to refer to the jamoon as the “naga pazham,” possibly because it is black. Many here distinguish the varieties that come from elsewhere as the “hybrids” to our local “naatu pazham” or country fruits. In this loose parlance, the naaval pazham and the naga pazham were interchangeable, and I took them for two names for essentially the same fruit.

It wasn’t until Sarika at Musings of a Malayali Monsoon noticed the smaller, rounder fruits in my pictures and asked if I wasn’t using Syzygium caryophyllatum instead of cumini did I realize that the jamoon’s country cousin might actually be a distinct species. Njara and naga are well-near homonyms, and it’s also possible that one just became the other so that Tamilians make a distinction between the naga pazham (local wild black plum, Syzygium caryophyllatum) and the naaval pazham (jamoon, Malabar plum, Syzygium cumini). The country fruit is smaller, rounder, tarter, leaner, and bluer. The Naaval is grander, elongated, plumper, pulpier, purple. But such distinctions in the end are a matter of degree, and taste-wise, the two carry very similar distinction. They tend to flower and fruit in roughly the same season, too (April-June-ish), adding to the confusion.

So then the clafoutis can accommodate either or both, depending on how much work you’d like to put into foraging the naga/njara pazham, and then pitting them! I worried that the astringence would mar the softer flavors of the clafoutis, but it was rather muted in baking. A good dusting of confectioner’s sugar and you’d hardly know this wasn’t a black cherry clafoutis, but a subversive black local fruit version.

It’s worth noting that the “jamun” by any name might be familiar, but it’s also ancient. Puranic cosmologies describe seven concentric continents, with Jambudvipa the first and central one—the continent of the black plum. That is today’s India, where once the jamoon fruits large as elephants fell upon mountains, their juices giving rise to streams (jambunadi) which flowed and fed the thirst of many an ancient citizen. The jambu fruit in this sense is both distinctive and definitive & it’s use in a clafoutis all the more nothing short of post-colonial riposte.

Here is the recipe–5 steps, but each one easy as clafoutis (pies are harder by far!) so I’ll do this one mostly in pictures.

Step 1: Pit the njara pazham, and fill a dish

Step 2: Sprinkle with toasted slivers of almonds

Step 3: Prepare the batter

Clafoutis batter is nothing more than the following ingredients, all whisked together fairly unceremoniously until the sugar has mostly dissolved:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla essence
• 2 tablespoons melted butter, and
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Step 4: Pour it on gently

Step 5: Bake at 180F/350C about 30-40 minutes, until beautifully puffed and golden

Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve right away. Et voila!