Few days back, one of my readers had asked about the famous “ambe-ananas sasam”. It took me some time to find good ripe mangoes to prepare this dish.
Like Airaawat , this is one more dish usually found in any Konkani functions (with mangoes during the mango season, otherwise only with pineapple). Go to any house, you will find one or the other dish with mango.
Mango is one friut I loved from my childhood, I have lot of memories with mango. We have about 20 mango trees in our garden. One of them is fondly named as Shilpa’s tree by my parents :).
Ingredients: Mango, pineapple pieces(one of them can be omitted) 1/2 cup Coconut 1 cup Mustard seeds 1/4 tea spn Red chillies 4-5 Tamarind extract 1/4 tea spn Jaggery/sugar 1 and 1/2 tea spn Salt
Method: Grind coconut, mustard, chillies, tamarind, jaggery and salt adding very little water (need not be ground into a very smooth paste). Add the mango, pineapple pieces. Mix well. Serve as a side dish with rice.
Serves : 2 Preparation time 10min
Payasa, Payasam or ‘paays’ is the sweet dish, a must in all functions. The Konkani ‘Paays’ or ‘paaysu’ is broadly classified as ‘GoDa paays (Paays with jaggery )’ and ‘Saakre paays (Paays with sugar)’. As far as my observation goes, all the elder generations like the jaggery paays and younger generations usually like sugar paays.There are a few paays like tandla paays(rice paays), muga paays(moong paays) etc in the first category. I haven’t yet tried a single one in this type. May be its time I should try some.
Sabudana paays, shevya (vermicelli) paays etc are under the second category. Basically I am a fan of this kind of paays. I still remember, whenever my aayi asked what sweet I would like, my answer was always either sabudana or vermicelli paays :).
Ingredients: Sabudana(Sabutandul) 1 cup Sugar 1 cup Milk 1/2 cup Cardamom powder 1/2 tea spn Cashews & raisins(dry grapes) 1 tea spn
Methods:
Soak sabudana in water for about half an hour. Cook in 2 cups of water until it becomes transparent. Add sugar, cashews, raisins and cook for around 5 min. Add milk and cardamom. Paays tastes yummy, hot or chilled. Serves : 3 Preparation time : 15min
