MANGOES (MANGIFERA INDICA)
A mango is a mango is a mango you might think, but this is not so. There are more than 500 types of mango and there may even be more than a thousand. Living in Pakistan I realize the truth in this. If you’ve never walked in a busy street, sucking the juice out of a small ripe mango, believe me, it’s quite a refreshing experience. You roll the small fruit between your hands to make the pulp soft, make a little hole in the top of the mango and suck out the juice. The alternative is to buy freshly squeezed mango juice from one of the many juice kiosks that line shopping streets. Then you may get a plastic cup or be given the juice in a plastic bag, with a straw. But it’s satisfying to suck the juice out of the fruit and then eat the pulp left on the stone.
Mangoes are native to India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, although there are mango groves all over south Asia now. Cultivation of the mango tree began amore than 4000 years ago, and as you can imagine with such a history, they are very much part of the culture. It’s monsoon time now and the mango has come into its own. In India it’s known as the King of Fruits, and is the national fruit of that country.
MANGO PICKLE (AAM KA ACHAR)
Ingredients
1 kg green mangoes washed well, dried well then cut into quarters, stones discarded
150 gr salt
3 tsps fenugreek seeds
6 tsp anise
15 gr black seeds (Kalvanji, Kalonji, Nigella sativa)
7 gr turmeric
2½ cups mustard oil
Method
Rub all the ground spices, salt and turmeric onto the cut mango pieces, with about 12 tsps of the oil.
Put these in a jar in the sun and leave for 2 days, making sure to shake the jar every day.
Pour in the remaining oil and leave for two weeks in the house, not in the sun.
Remember to shake the jar on alternate days.
You can eat it after 20 days but it can be kept for about 2 years - if it isn’t eaten by then.
Keep the pieces of mango covered with oil.
Don’t throw the oil away when the pickle is finished; use it for the next batch of mango pickle.
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