Raw mango is called ambli (Konkani) or mavinkayi (Kannada). In India, it is a mango season now. Every time I talk to my parents, they talk about mangoes in our yard. We have many mango trees, though they are not any export quality mangoes, they are one of the best mangoes I have ever tasted. Juicy, sweet and full of pulp. So usually these are used in cooking also.
Aayi gave this recipe to me last week when I was in search of mango recipes. This is not the famous ambli gojju the Konkanis are familiar with(I will post that version some other time). The mangoes we get here are pathetic, so after couple of failure trials, I have stopped buying them. We get raw ones here, by chance if we get ripe one, they have the hairy pulp(not sure what it is called, it is impossible to eat these mangoes). So my best choice was to buy them from Indian store. I bought the most fragrant ones that I could find. When I tasted them, they were very sour. So I thought of using them for this recipe. This recipe calls for raw mangoes and jaggery is added to give the sweet taste to it. Instead of that I used these semi ripe – sweetish sour mangoes and the final result was very good. You can’t eat it in large quantity like a side dish, but it is best when tried like a chutney, a little at a time.
Ingredients: 1 cup mango pieces 1 tea spn jaggery 1 tea spn chili powder 1/2 tea spn finely chopped garlic Oil Salt
Increase or decrease the jaggery content according to the sweetness of mangoes. This dish should have a tinge of sweetness.
Method: Cook mango pieces in water till they are soft. Mash them. (I cooked them along with the skin and used mixer to slightly grind it). Mix jaggery, salt, chili powder and mix well. Heat oil and add garlic. Fry for a min and pour it on the gojju . Serve with hot rice.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 15mins
Hayagreev maDDi is a sweet dish from Udupi. There is a story behind the birth of this sweet dish. A goldsmith was making Ganesh face from gold. But every time he tried, he got a horse face( Hayavadana in Sanskrit). He remelted the gold and tried again with same outcome. After trying many times, with the same outcome, he got frustrated and threw it in dustbin. Same night Shri Vadiraj Swami (a famous pontiff who started Vadiraj math ) got a dream in which lord Hayagreev – Lord Vishnu’s avtaar (incarnation) with a horse face, appeared and said, it has fallen in dustbin after getting beatings from goldsmith and requested him to save it and worship it daily. Same day it showed up in goldsmith’s dreams and asked him to surrender to Shri Vadiraj Swami. Swamiji saves it from the dustbin and worships it daily. Since horse likes chana , Swamiji used to cook chana , make a paste of it, then add jaggery, ghee etc and prepare a dish called maDDi, and then offer it to Hayagreev . (This information is from the ‘Udupi special’ article from a popular Kannada magazine).
One of my readers asked me for this recipe. Though this dish is prepared very commonly in our place, the name was new to me. Initially when I heard it from my aayi, I thought it is very simple dish and nothing special about it. But still I went ahead and tried it. It was one of the tastiest sweet dishes. It has a very great aroma of cardamom and ghee . Try it and I am sure you will love it.
Ingredients: 1 cup chana daal 1/2 cup jaggery 2-3 tbl spn fresh/frozen coconut 1/2 tea spn cardamom powder 7-8 cashews 7-8 raisins(dry grapes) 1-2 tbl spn ghee
Method: Wash chana daal , cook in enough water(approximately double the water, more water can be added if required) till it is soft and all water is evaporated (I cooked on the stove top). It should still hold shape, but cooked. Add jaggery, raisins and cashews(broken). Keep mixing till all the jaggery is melted and well mixed with other ingredients. Add coconut, cardamom powder, ghee mix well and take out from heat.
Serves : 2 Preparation time : 40mins (to speed up, cook in cooker)
