Mama's Green Mango Curry

For me this is one of Mama's best vegetable dishes. It took a good hour of sitting with her to work out the recipe and translate the ingredients into English. It was only when she started cooking the dish this morning I realised we'd forgotten a couple of stages and ingredients. Hopefully we have it all now. You might need to experiment with the quantities a bit, but it's worth it for the finished result. Unfortunatley I don't think you'll be able to find all the ingredients in England, in particular the green mangos, so this one is for readers in India only.

Serves 4

250g unripe green mangos (see picture if you don't know what to look for). These should be washed and roughly sliced into strips around the stone. Keep the skin on and include the stone. Don't worry if it's still got mango flesh on it, you can eat around it. Mangos should be sliced from the stalk upwards so you get less of the stringy fibres.
2 medium onions, finely diced or grated if you have a grater.
2 small bulbs of garlic, peeled into cloves and crushed in pestel and mortar.
50g vegetable oil
1 tsp red chilli powder
1/2 tsp tumeric
4 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 tsp sanaf (fennel seeds I think)
1 tsp cumin
1/2 cup water
1 tsp miti (a spice available from the general store, smells a bit like curry leaves, looks like little pellets). Be sure to pick out the dust and little pieces of stone.
100g gud or brown sugar. Gud is the raw material of sugar and is available at the general store. Looks a bit like toffee, see picture. The gud should be bashed in the pestel and mortar so that it crumbles easily when you add it to the pan.

1. Boil the mango for 8 minutes until it softens. Throw out the water afterwards and place the mango to one side.
2. Put the oil in the pan and place on the chula, or stove to heat up. Add the onion, garlic, miti and cumin to the hot oil.
3. Add the rest of the spices to water and mix well. Add the spice mixture to the hot oil and stir.
4. Add the bashed gud or sugar to the pan.
5. Add the mango and cook for 10 minutes on a high heat. You may need to add some more water if the curry isn't runny enough.

How to eat- do not eat the skin or the stone. When I first arrived in Laporiya I tried to eat the skin because I didn't know what the vegetable was and didn't want to appear rude. Pick up the pieces of mango and eat the juicy flesh inside them. Serve with roti.

How to make Mama's chai

Chai is integral to Indian life, especially here in Laporiya, and from what I can work out, every cook has her (round here at least, it's usually a woman) own signature style of chai. Sanju, the office cook loves using lots of black pepper in her's, giving it a nice kick, whereas my new mum really goes all out for chini (sugar) leading to head rushes and gradual loss of teeth.

I've been here almost two weeks and still don't know how to make chai. In a bid for independance I asked Mama to show me the way. Remarkably she understood the word 'show' and was happy to abide.


Makes one cup

1. Take a medium saucepan and add half a cup of water and half a cup of milk.
2. Place on a medium to high heat and add 1 teaspoon of loose tea leaves.
3. Add sugar to taste. Mama would probably have put three teaspoons, I went for one.
4. Finely crush two dried cardoman pods in a pestel and mortar and add to the tea.
5. Once the mixure has heated through and starts to boil up, pour through a seive into your cup and serve.

Chai gets develops a thin skin almost instantly. Don't panic, just use your finger to move the skin to one side of the cup and enjoy.