Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Kokam along with all the Kokam containing recipes presented on this site, with 10 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Kokam (mangosteen, wild mangosteen or red mango) is the Bengali/Hindi name for the fruit of Garcinia indica a tree native to tropics of the Old World and a member of the Clusiaceae family of dicotyledonous flowering plants. The kokam tree itself is a slender evergreen small tree with drooping branches which attain a pyramidal shape on maturity. It is dioecious (bearing both male and female flowers) and grows up to 18m in height. The fruit it bears is spherical, as large as a small orange, purple throughout, not grooved, having 5-8 seeds compressed in an acid pulp.

Though the whole fruit (above, left) is used as a spice (especially in Maharashtra) it is far more common to encounter the dried peel (above, right) which has an acid taste and an agreeable flavour and is used as a souring agent (often in place of Tamarind) in curries and other dishes from Coorg. The trees are mainly grown in the Konkan (Maharashtra), Malabar (Kerala) and Canara (Karnataka) regions of Western India. An oil (kokam oil) is pressed from the seeds and in the regions of it's production it is extensively used to adulterate ghee. The seeds of the fruit can also be used to yield and edible fat known as 'kokam butter'.

The dried and salted rind of kokam is the most familiar form of this spice in the West and it makes an excellent addition to any curry, lending an aromatic acidity and a red colour. Indeed, it is sometimes used as a cheaper substitute to tamarind in souring curries. It is also used with dhal (lentils or peas) in the cuisine of Gujarat.