Mahanandi

For this weeks’s Indian Kitchen:
Mango Juice
Mango Pulp
Slice of Fresh Ripe Mango
Slice of Unripe Green Mango
Dried Mango Pulp Cubes
Amchur Powder (Dried, Unripe Mango Powder)

Looking forward to receiving your entries via email, for tomorrow’s JFI ~ Mango event.

For some, mangoes are exotic fruits. For me, mango jam is exotic. Cooking the ripe fruit with sugar until they are mush and set, may be an age old technique of fruit preserving, but I never did that with mangoes until now. As part of JFI-Mango Event on May 1st, I’ve decided to try some new recipes and feature some of my old favorites with mangoes. This is one of the recipes that I selected to write about.

Who doesn’t love jam toast in the morning? It’s quick and easy. The type of breakfast many of us here, prefer on a weekday morning for that rush hour energy boost. But, often store-bought fruit preserves are loaded with more cheap corn syrup than the fruit. Preparing jam at home means controlling the sugar quantity that is added to the fruit to our liking.

My recipe for mango jam is simple. Pick ripe mangoes, peel and cut them into small cubes. Add little bit of limejuice to give that extra acidic edge and cook the fruit with sugar until it turns mushy and comes together like firm, yet moist solidity. Store it in a clean glass jar and refrigerate. Buy or bake bread and you don’t have to worry about “what’s for breakfast?” question, at least for few days.

Recipe:
(for about 1 cup of jam)

1 big, ripe mango
(Peeled and cut into small cubes - 1½ cup of cut fruit)
¼ cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of lime juice

Take them all in a clean pot. Cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring in-between. The sugar will melt and the fruit will break down. Within 15 to 20 minutes, The soggy, watery mass will come together into solid, moist lump, like halwa or kova and set. Turn off the heat. Let it cool for few minutes and store in a clean jar.

1 cup of mango jam lasted for 4 toasts for us. We couldn’t resist the quiveringly tender, rich yellow-sapphire like mango jam and consumed half of it even before cooling.

Recipe Notes:
My version is low sugar preserve.
For sweet commercial type of jam taste - increase the above sugar quantity to half cup.
Mango jam sets easily because of pectin content in mangoes. But if you are planning to prepare this jam on a big scale, adding some commercial pectin might be helpful.

I started out my weekend with a plan. The plan was to prepare the famous Andhra mango pickle, ‘avakaya’, for next week’s JFI. You know about pickles. To prepare and present it, you need to make it at least one week in advance. So, I went to Pittsburgh and picked out the greenest mangoes available at one of the Indian grocery stores. The mangoes were very green and hard and so I was confident that they were unripe. On Sunday, I was in full pickle making mode. Cleaned out the kitchen, dried out any signs of moisture from counter tops and prepared all the essentials - mustard seed powder and red chilli powder. I was all ready to make pickle. But alas…

As often happens with the best laid out plans, things went awry. In this case, green, hard and thought to be unripe mangoes, when cut open, were ripe inside. The flesh was pale yellow and the taste was not very sour. I had to drop my plan to make pickle. Instead of going down the path of questioning my life in US, where I can’t even prepare my favorite pickle, I picked up my spirits and quickly found a use for my not so green, not so ripe mangoes. I remembered Mika’s comment about her way of preparing mango rice with coconut and also her recently blogged mango rice recipe. I had all the ingredients, including a fresh, decent coconut. Viola… the life in US looked much better.:)

I tried out the mango pulihora with coconut and mustard powder. Between the tangy sweetness of mango+coconut and the sharp, zesty flavor of mustard+chillies, the taste of pulihora was so unique and irresistible. I was glad that I tried this recipe, this one is a keeper. Thanks Mika.

Fresh coconut, Green Unripe Mango, Mustard Seeds and Green Chillies

Recipe:
(steps written in order of preparation)

Cook Rice:
1 cup of rice in 2 cups of water.
(I prepared it with Sona Masuri Rice)

Finely Powder:
2 teaspoons of mustard seeds - using a spicemill or coffee grinder

Make a Paste:
1 medium sized green unripe mango - peeled and cubed
½ cup of finely chopped fresh coconut
8 to 10 small green chillies

Grinding the mango, coconut and green chillies

Heat and Toast:
1 teaspoon of peanut oil, in a big saut� pan.
¼ cup of peanuts to golden brown color and remove.

Do the Popu or Tadka:
Add another teaspoon of oil or ghee to the same pan. Do the popu by toasting one teaspoon of each - cumin, mustard seeds, urad dal, chana dal, few pieces of dried red chillies and curry leaves.

Sauteeing the ingredients

Add and Saut�:
To the popu, add the
Mustard seed powder,
Smooth mango-coconut-chilli paste,
1 teaspoon of turmeric and salt.

Stir and saut� this mixture for 3 to 5 minutes on medium heat, until the mango paste leaves its raw smell. Don’t overcook, that would kill the precious mango flavor completely. Stir in the toasted peanuts that were kept aside. Switch off the heat.

To this saut�ed mixture, add the cooked rice. Mix thoroughly and serve. The pulihora should taste little bit tartly because of unripe mango, sweet due to coconut, spicy strong because of chillies and mustard powder.

Mango-Coconut Pulihora

Mango Pulihora - Andhra Style

I did the sprouting thing with methi to try methi sprouts salad last month and found that the salad was very bitter for my taste. I planted the leftover methi sprouts in a container. (Sprinkled the sprouts on soil and covered them loosely with soil.) Watered them daily and kept the container in direct sunlight. After a month, they are now at this size, growing healthy and in a beautiful shade of green. So pretty to look at.

I’ve plans to plant mint, coriander,tomato and peas. So what are you planning to grow this spring/summer?

Checkout very naughty Kiri and all other cute kitties of food blogging world at Clare’s Eat Stuff.

Vegetables which are at normal prices at our local grocery store now are banana peppers and baby red potatoes. Banana peppers are mildly hot and the new crop, baby red potatoes are mildly sweet. These two are cooked in tomato gravy thickened by the addition of creamy-white, rich poppy seed (khus-khus, gasa gasalu) paste. The taste of the curry is like that of made with almond paste.

Banana Pepper, Baby Red Potato, Poppy Seeds(Khus Khus, Gasa Gasaalu)

Recipe:

Heat in a big saucepan, over medium-low heat:
1 teaspoon of peanut oil

Toast to do the popu or tadka:
1 teaspoon each of cumin, mustard seeds, minced garlic and few curry leaves

Add and Saut�: (listed in order)
1 onion - chopped
4 juicy tomatoes- chopped
8 baby red potatoes -peeled and cubed
4 banana peppers - cut into small rings crosswise

Stir in:
¼ cup poppy seeds(gasa gasalu)-finely powdered using a spicemill/coffee grinder
1 tsp of ginger-garlic-coriander paste
2 tsp of cumin-coriander seed-clove-cinnamon powder
1 tsp of salt
½ tsp of red chilli powder and turmeric

Add 2 cups of water and mix well. Cover and cook on medium heat for about 15 to 20 minutes, stirring in-between. When the gravy reaches the consistency you desire, turn off the heat. Let the curry sit for 10 minutes and serve warm.
Tastes superb with chapatis or with rice.

Banana Pepper- Baby Alu Curry with Chapatis ~ Our meal today