Tickling Palates: Manga Oorugai ~ Mango Pickle

I was not feeling well last week. It was last Sunday when I had this body pain as though I have been run over by a truck, severe headache and high fever from that night onwards. My Doc said it was viral fever caused by change in the climate of course. Though I had lot of recipes in the drafts it felt a huge task to boot my laptop, connecting to the net and to hit the publish button. After two days it was Arun coming down with high fever next it was Arjun’s turn. The only person who escaped the ride was dear hubby. By the week’s end I was so tired with playing the sick and also the nurse I spent the whole week end recuperating sipping hot soups.

Two weeks ago I had made mango pickles as its season is coming to an end I did not want to miss out on storing them for some more time and after last week all the salt and the spice had got well incorporated into the pickle it tasted swell with sambar rice yesterday. It felt nice to be eating regular meals after a week’s respite. Both my mother and MIL are very good in making pickles. I give below two different ways of making this pickle.

Mango Pickle

Method - 1

What u need:

Sour Raw Mangoes – 5

Salt – 1 cup

Red chili powder – 1 cup

Mustard seeds – ½ tsp

Gingelly oil (sesame oil) – ½ cup

Asafetida – ¼ tsp

Fenugreek seeds – ½ tsp

Mustard seeds or cumin seeds – ½ tsp

What to do:

Wash the mangoes well and peel the skin away. Cut them into 1 inch cubes. Measure the cubes to 4 cups. Mix the salt and the red chilli powder to the mangoes. In a pan dry roast the fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds or cumin seeds separately and grind them to a fine powder in a mixer together and keep aside. In a kadai heat the oil and temper it with mustard seeds and asafetida, when it splutters add the ground powder and add this oil to the mango mixture. Store this either in a ceramic ware or a food grade plastic ware. Let it be for minimum two days and mix it in between so that the all gets mixed together and the salt and the chilli powder gets into the mango pieces. This goes very well with curd, sambar rice and also with upma.

Method - 2

Cut the mangoes into pieces after peeling the skin and measure it to 4 cups. In a vessel mix one cup salts with the mango pieces and leave it overnight. In the morning take the pieces separately from the water and dry it in sunlight on a clean plastic sheet. Do not throw away the water. In the evening put the dried pieces into the water again. Leave it overnight for the mangoes to soak in the salted water. In the morning repeat this again.

The next day the mango pieces would have dried completely. In a pan heat the oil and temper it with half a tsp of mustard seeds when it splutters add ½ tsp turmeric powder and 1 cup red chilli powder.

Put the dried mango pieces into the oil along with the remaining salted water in which the mangoes had soaked and mix well. Let the mangoes soak for 2 days before consuming this pickle.

Pickles are one way of eating any vegetable all around the year even if its particular season is over. This goes to Maninas Eating with the season.