Sweet and Spicy Mango Curry

KUNAL CHANDRA, Food & Beverage Communications Specialist, heads into the kitchen to create some wonderful mango magic for Yahoo! Promising us a dish that is sweet, spicy and tangy, this mango curry is the season’s best comfort food, sure to light up a warm fire inside. Location Courtesy: Café Grind. Text: ANISHA OOMMEN. Photographs: AZHAR ALI.

This dish is inspired from treasured childhood flavours, Kunal tells us. “I always enjoyed eating this curry when I was young; it would be served at housewarmings, where we would eat it off a banana leaf. Families would serve this with pineapple – I wanted to try it with mango!”

So gather us your ingredients before cooking, it’s always good to be organized in the kitchen:  Tamarind, dried chilies, one ripe yellow mango, asafetida/hing, some curry leaves, jaggery, sesame seeds and mustard seeds.
“This curry is sweet, spicy and tangy all at once. Sweetness from the mango, tangy sourness from the tamarind and spice from the chilies.”

So first, slice and dice your mangoes, and then pluck out the soft pulpy insides into a bowl.

Add your mangoes cubes to a pan of water with a dash of salt, and slowly bring it to a boil.

“Here, you see, is that marked difference between using raw and cooked mango – cooked mango is juicier, has a different texture to its fibre, and the flavor transforms from sweet to something much fuller and rounded.”

Meanwhile you can begin to roast your spices on an open pan. Spread your seasame seeds and dried chili onto the pan and roast till it turns to a golden brown. Roasting the spices is definitive to the flavor of the dish. Keep an eye on the colour as it turns, to make sure you don’t burn it – or the whole dish could be ruined!

Once the spices are nice and golden, put it into a blender and grind into a paste. “This is where all that delicious flavor comes from!”
Remember the tamarind? This next step is where we use it. Remove the tamarind pulp and smush it around in a glass of warm water to release the flavour. Once the water turns into a light brown colour, you can squeeze out the tamarind and discard it; we will only need its liquid flavor. Add that to your spice mix and give it another go on the blender.

“Your mango should be getting soft, and slowly disintegrating over the fire. To that lovely yellow pulp, we add some grated jaggery. Jaggery has a fuller sweetness than sugar, and it’s more local, which is a philosophy we try to follow – using good, clean, fresh and local products in every dish.”

Now, pour in that creamy spice paste into the mango pulp.

Some red chili powder and salt to taste.

And finally, a little tadka to bring all the flavours of the dish together: 2 teaspoons of hot oil in a pan, hot enough for the mustard seeds to burst on contact, and some of the hing we kept aside in the beginning. Throw in a few curry leaves to bring out that mouth-watering aroma.

And your mango curry is ready to be plated!

Nothing goes better with this sweet and spicy curry than some beautifully steamed white rice. 
Soul food for the balmy summer heat!