Mango Mania in India

MANGO MANIA

Mangoes in Hyderabad May 2012

The mango season has well and truly arrived again here in Hyderabad - and indeed across India - and, despite dire predictions of a shortage of crop due to rain damage earlier in the year, the markets are brimming with mangoes of all shapes and sizes ... Alphonsos, Banganpallis, Malgovas, Dussehris and Raspuris to name just  a few varieties of what is known as the "king of fruits".

There are some 500 commercial varieties of mangoes around the world and India is the largest producer ... growing more than 11 million tonnes of mangoes annually and supplying more than 50% of the world crop.   The state of Andhra Pradesh - of which Hyderabad is the capital - is one of the centres of mango production in India ... producing the highest yield per acre in the country.

Mangoes in India are used in a myriad of different recipes - in curries and pulaos, chutneys and pickles, combined with seafood, chicken and other meats, in cakes and traditional Indian desserts, mixed into cocktails and other non-alcoholic drinks.   Some are cooked when they are still green and unripe and some are used when they have developed that familiar golden hue.

Health freaks will rave on about how the fruit is high in Vitamin C and beta-carotene but the main attraction of the mango is just the spectular burst of flavour that you get when eating them!

Here are a few of my favourite recipes that I have been cooking over the past few weeks:

Stephanie Alexander's Mango Salsa

The cook, writer and restaurateur Stephanie Alexander is regarded as something of a national treasure in Australia and her most well known book, "The Cook's Companion" - a 1200 page scholarly compendium of ingredients and recipes for the Australian kitchen - has been in print for the past 20 odd years and regularly rates as the one of the best cookbooks in Australia.

I was lucky enough to meet her in her house in Melbourne some years ago when I was filming a profile on Kylie Kwong, the Chinese Australian chef now made famous across Asia through her cooking shows on cable television.   Stephanie has been a mentor to Kylie throughout her career and has influenced many other younger generation chefs over the years.

Here is her wonderfully tasting Mango Salsa recipe thats simply bursting with flavours ... it goes with just about any main course meal ... especially chicken and seafood dishes.

Ingredients:

1 mango, peeled and diced    5 slices of red onion or 2 shallots, minced    1 red or green chilli, finely chopped    1/4 C fresh mint leaves, chopped    2 T lime juice    1 t sugar   

Method:

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and allow to stand in fridge  for severalhours before using.   Great with seafood or poultry. 

Desert Candy's Mango Salad

This simple recipe comes from one of my favourite food blogs - Desert Candy - written by Mercedes,  a young woman based in the US with a Middle East/Arab background.  Her blog explores recipes and stories from across the Middle East and more Western repertoires.

Ingredients:
Diced fresh mango, unsweetened dried coconut, chopped scallions (green parts only), toasted cashews or peanuts, lime juice, salt.

Method:
Simply mix together all ingredients in proportions suitable to your liking.

Seriously tasty and great alongside grilled chicken or anything spicy.

Shelina Permalloo's Mango, Rum and Lime Syllabub

I read a profile on Shelina Permallo (in The UK Telegraph newspaper ?) after she won the most recent UK Master chef series; she is an amateur British cook with a Mauritian-heritage which she apparently incorporated into her winning recipes on the television series.   Mangoes are said to be a recurrent theme in her cooking and this dessert was a winner from the first time I made it for a dinner party.   (see A Spanish Meal)

Ingredients:

300ml double cream    150ml Alfonso mango purée    2 Alfonso mangoes chopped into 1cm cubes    75ml of rum, plus 4 tsp    4 limes (juice and grated zest)    Seeds scraped from ½ a vanilla pod   (or use teaspoon vanilla essence)    3 tbs icing sugar    4 ginger biscuits, crushed    Desiccated coconut to sprinkle over the top

 Method:

1/.   Put the biscuits in a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to smash them into crumbs.

2/.   Lightly whip the double cream and add the vanilla, 75ml rum, lime juice and zest. Keep whisking until it forms light peaks.

3/.   Add 50ml of the mango purée and fold through for a marbled effect.   Chill again if time.

4/.    To assemble, divide the crumbs between four glasses. Sprinkle 1 tsp of rum over each and pour over the mango purée.

5/.    Add mango cubes & mint & coconut.

Have a great mango season wherever you are!

Tony saab/Hyderabad   May 2012

A Spanish meal ....

 

A few weeks back we invited our friend Rebeca, who is originally from Spain, to come and cook a Spanish feast for us for lunch. We first met Rebeca on a Hash trip to Hampi - the historic World Heritage site in the neighbouring state of Karnataka. ( We are all in the Hyderabad chapter of the Hash House Harriers walking/running group which meets every Sunday afternoon somewhere in the city and occasionally travels on weekend trips to other parts of India.)

We started talking and soon discovered we all liked food and trying new recipes from various parts of the world.   Rebeca comes from the north east of Spain - from a town called Tarazona in the region of Aragon.   She descibed the town as an ancient village dating back before 1492 and where Muslims, Christian and Jewish communities have lived side by side for generations.
There are no Spanish restaurants in Hyderabad as yet so we decided to cook Spanish food at home ... with some Spanish and Chilean wine to add to the celebrations! 

Rebeca preparing a Spanish feast in our kitchen

Rebecca decided to cook two of her family's favourite recipes ... Marmitako - a fish and potato soup cooked in a prawn-infused fish stock, and Albondigas en Salsa - a meatball stew flavoured with a walnut and white wine sauce.   Both dishes were truly outstanding and I learnt a lot from watching Rebecca prepare this meal.  
Marmitako is a recipe from the Basque region of northern Spain.  It has its origins in the fishing communities of the region where fish, potatoes and onions were in plentiful supply whether on or off the boats during the fishing season.

Albondigas is one of Rebeca's mother's favourite recipes - which she cooks whenever her immediate family gets together - all 15 of them.   The dish can be prepared the day before and is always served with lots of crunchy bread to soak up the rich sauce.
I learnt a new way to cut potatoes - cutting halfway through the spud and then 'tearing' the last part to give each piece a rough edge when cooked so that the flavour clings to the potato.   And adding white onions to a lettuce salad after soaking them in salty water for some time to take away the astringency.

Rolling the meatballs by hand .. 'with love and care!'

The rolled meatballs before frying

Pan frying the meatballs just to brown them

The pot of Marmitako

The salad with the addition of white onions soaked in salt & water

Serving the lunch ... where's the wine???

Here are Rebeca's recipes for the two main courses at lunch ...

MARMITAKO    (Fish and Potato Soup):

A delicious mix of seafood & potatoes served in a fish fumet

Ingredients

2-3 onions.

2 greep pepper

2 cloves of garlic

2 ripe tomatoes

choricero or ancho chiles

olive oil (better extra virgin olive oil)

tuna fish (or other similiar fish, could be salmon also)

1 kg potatoes

Method:

1/.   Prepare the fumé:   Boil fish stock (1 litre more or less) ... or use water as a substitute ... and then add some prawns, fish bones, or head of a fish will be nice plus  2 carrots, 1 onion, parsley, pinch of salt, and a few drops of olive oil.

 2/.   Whilst fume' is simmering, cut the onions and peppers into thin strips, fry them till golden and soft (put first the pepper because it is harder than onions).   When they are soft add the chopped ripe tomatoes to make a nice sauce.   When this is cooked add the potatoes cut into 4 pieces each with rough edges and stir into the sauce and then add the stock. Cook the potatoes till soft, take a few pieces from the soup and smash them up and add them again to the pot ... this is to make the stock a little bit thicker.
3/.   Add the tuna cubes to the soup and let it cook and boil for no more than 4 minutes ( depending on the size of the cubes, but it is important not to leave the fish to dry.)

4/.   Serve from the pot in individual soup bowls.

Rebeca suggests looking at another version of Marmitako on this website:   

http://www.spain-recipes.com/marmitako.html

 

Albondigas en Salsa de Nueces y Vino Blanco 

(Meatballs in Walnut Sauce and White Wine)

Meatballs with the crushed walnuts and white wine added.

Ingredients:

750gr minced beef

2-4 chicken legs unboned, and skinless, also mince,

chopped garlic, parsley.

1 egg
some breads crumbs soaked in 2 T milk

some flour

crushed walnut and white wine
extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

Method:

1/.   Chop the garlic and parsley - put in a bowl and add a beaten egg. Then add the minced meat already seasoned with salt & pepper and mix with the hands ( this is important to do with love and care! ) then add the bread crumbs and mix again.

2/.   Leave to rest for a while and then start making the meatballs.   Do not make the meat balls too big because look they nicer if they are small and also the meat will be more tender after frying them.
3/.   Once you have rolled out all the meat balls, brown them in oil till golden outside, but not too cooked inside.
4/.   Once fried, and having the meatballs inside the pan, add a pinch of flour to the olive oil in the pan, cook and stir for a few minutes then add water and salt. Add the crushed walnuts and also a 1/2 cup of white wine and boil for few minutes till the sauce gets a bit thick.

....   and then 'is done' ... as Rebeca would say!

My dessert ... rum & mango syllabub with ginger snap base, fresh mint  & roasted coconut

Tony saab, Hyderabad, INDIA, May 2012 

Some Thai food ...

Last October on the way back from Melbourne we stopped over in Bangkok.   This was during the monsoon period and the Chao Phraya river which runs through the middle of the city was flooding.   It was a bizarre sight to see restaurants and shops still open despite being knee deep in water.
(We were only there for the day but the flooding - the worst in more than 50 years - eventually affected over 13.5 million people and killed more than 800.)

  

At the airport bookshop I bought Martin Boetz's "Modern Thai Food", a mouthwatering collection of over 100 recipes with a modern twist to traditional Thai cuisine.   Boetz is the owner-chef of the two "Longrain" Thai restaurants in Australia - in Sydney and, more recently, Melbourne.   He is a protege of the legendary David Thompson, whose early restaurant in Australia - Darley Street Thai in Sydney - Boetz apprenticed at in the kitchen. 

David Thompson's own Bangkok restaurant "Nahm" was named earlier this week in the list of World's Top 50 Restaurants; he has a similar establishment in London which has a Michelen Star to its name.   Several years ago I did a cooking class with David Thompson and he is also an inspirational teacher.   

His own book on Thai cuisine "Thai Food" was released several years ago and became an instant classic; my copy is signed by him!   It is an exhaustive compedium on Thai food incorporating recipes attached to funeral pamphlets from the 18th and 19th centuries; Thai famnilies used to bury their dead with copies of their favourite recipes so they could 'share' them in the afterlife.

So respected is David Thompson that the Thai government appointed him as a special representative to over see the rehabilitation of ancient Thai cuisine.

Anyway, the other day we managed to get some beef undercut - which is not easy to find or purchase here in Hyderabad where goat rules the land - and I turned to Martin Boetz's book for this delicious recipe.   What makes it special is the potent sauce - more of a slurry as the food writers would say!? - made up of a mixture of soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic & ginger, rice wine, dark vinegar and sugar.

The beef is cooked slowly for a considerable period and the sauce gives it a smoky, sweet and sour taste once you slice it onto a plate and top with a simple Thai herb salad dressed with lime juice and fish sauce. 

Braised beef shin with Thai herbs

Ingredients:

500g beef    2T thick soy sauce    100 ml oil    5 cloves garlic    4cm ginger, peeled    2 coriander roots, cleaned    1 red onion    100ml rice wine    3 1/2 T rock sugar, crushed    100ml oyster sauce    750 ml chicken stock    3 T black Chinese vinegar (or use balsamic)    1 t salt

Herb salad:    3T fresh lime juice    1/2 cayenne pepper    1 T fish sauce    2 green chillies, chopped    coriander leaves   mint leaves    2 spring onions, chopped    2 shallots, sliced    1 red chilli, crushed

Method:     

1/.   Rub beef with soy sauce then quickly brown on all sides.   Place in a braising dish.   

2/.   Pound garlic, ginger, coriander root and onion to a paste.   Heat oil in heavy based pot and fry paste till golden brown.   Discard excess oil & deglaze pot with rice wine.   Add sugar, oyster sauce and stock, bring to boil and then pour over beef in dish.   Cover with cooking paper & fopil and cook gently for 1 1/2 hours approx until meat is soft.

3/.   Remove meat and boil down liquid to reduce to a third in volume.   Add vinegar and salt to taste.

4/.   Herb salad:   combine lime juice, red pepper, fisah sauce and chillies - should tatse hot & sour.

Toss rest of ingredients in a bowl and add dressing.  

5/.   To serve, slice beef into 1 cm slices and reheat in the braising liquid.   Place meat on plate and pour over sauce.   Place herb salad on top and serve with white rice.

Tony saab, Hyderabad May 2012

Two cookbooks for inspiration

Some cookbooks inspiring me in recent weeks ...

A book of Syrian Jewish Recipes

I've been cooking from a lot of Central European and Middle Eastern cookbooks lately.   One of my favourite new acquisitions is a comparatively old publication "Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of the Syrian Jews", written by US-based author Poopa Dweck & first published in 2007.   It profiles the cuisine of Syria's now comparatively small Jewish community which centred around the ancient city of Aleppo in the north west of Syria between the Euphrates River and the Mediterannean Sea.  

  

                      

Aleppo, and its sister city of Damascus some 300 kilometres to the south, are said to be the oldest inhabited cities in the world.   The Jewish community in Aleppo dates back as far as 560BC and subsequent waves of Jewish migrants settled in the city throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.   In recent times many member of this community migrated to the United States, particularly in the early 20th century, and it was from here that this book had its origins.

Their cuisine focuses on the use of legumes, rice, whole grains, vegetables, dairy products and breads & pastries.   Some of the more famous dishes include Kibbeh - stuffed Syrian meatballs with rice (similar to the many variations of kibbeh I remember from Middle Eastern shops and restaurants in Melbourne), Bazargan - a tangy tamarind bulgur wheat salad and Sambousak - buttery cheese-filled savoury pastries.   

  

Claudis Roden's lastest magnum opus on Spain!

Coincidentally, another of my favourite new cookbooks is Claudia Roden's recently published "The Food of Spain" which also deals with the Jewish diaspora.   Madame Roden (as may of her fans refer to her!) also writes of the contribution Jewish culture has made to world culinary history ... in this case heavily influencing the cuisine(s) of Spain after the Arab invasions of the Spanish mainland beginning in the 7th Century. 

 

                                                   

In a curious link between these two books, the Jewish communities of Spain suffered persecution by Christains who invaded the country from the 10th Century and during the Spanish Inquisition many Spanish Jews fled to countries in the surrounding regions like Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Northern Africa.   In the 15th Century many Jewish emigres fled to countries of the then Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed by it's ruler Sultan Beyazid. This was how the Jews of Aleppo first established their communities in Syria.   

Thus began a period of great prosperity and trade in the region and the flourishing of a rich culture that included cuisines and methods of cooking and preparing food unique to the region.

                                             

Here are a few of the more successful recipes I have been cooking from these two books over recent months ... (photos to follow!):  

  

Salata Arabia   Basic Syrian salad with lemon-cumin dressing

from "Aromas of Aleppo"

Whilst this recipe is a very basic salad similar to what you would find on tables in India, whats interesting is the dressing which uses a mixture of ground cumin and lemon juice.    As Poopa Dweck notes, "Cumin is featured in the traditional dressing for Salata ...  many people do not know that cumin is in the parsley family.   It is the dried fruit of the plant, whose seeds give many Syrian dishes an earthy flavour."  

Ingredients:  

6 cucumbers, finely chopped    4 tomatoes, finely chopped    1 bunch parsley, freshly chopped

1/2 cup lemon juice   1 t ground cumin   1 t rock ground salt   6 spring onions, finely chopped

Method:

Mix together cucumber, tomatoes, parsley lemon juice, cumin, salt and spring onions.   Toss well and serve.

Djaz Riz w'Hummus   Roast chicken with rice and chickpeas

from "Aromas of Aleppo"

This was a great recipe but like many "Westerners" I didnt quite get the rice cooked properly the first time; I mixed up the measurements for the liquid components when reaching the rice cooking stage in step 4.   But the end result was still OK and the next time it was perfect.

Also, if you are in Hyderabad you can get 'allspice' at the SPAA supermarket in Begumpet.

Ingredients:

  

1 large chicken (I order it with the skin on as its more flavourful when cooking; you can remove it in stage 2 if preferred.)    2 onions, diced    6 garlic cloves, chopped    2 T vegetable oil    I C vermicelli, broken into smaller sticks    3 C long grain rice    1 1/2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight and then cooked    2 t allspice    1/2 t black pepper    2 t salt

Method:

1/.   In a large pot, cover chicken with water, bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for one hour.

2/.   Remove chicken from pot and let stand to cool for 30 minutes.    Keep 4 cups of the broth (and store rest for another time).   Bone chicken when cool - either removing skin or keep on - and cut or tear into small chunks.

3/.   In another large pot, heat oil and saute onions and garlic until soft (I add a pinch of salt to help prevent onions from burning).   The add vermicellei and rice and cook for 1 minute.

4/.   Add to the pot the chicken, chickpeas, 4 cups of chicken broth plus 2 extra cups of water, allspice, pepper and salt.   Bring pot to boil over high heat and then reduce heat to low & simmer covered for 30 mins or until rice is fluffy. 

Patatas Alinadas - Andalusia   Mashed potatoes with olive oil and spring onions

from "The Food of Spain"

Ingredients:

1 kg plus of potatoes, peeled and quartered    6 T extra virgin olive oil    salt & pepper    8 spring onions, chopped    2 T parsley, chopped   

Method:

1/.   Cook potatoes in boiling slated water until soft ... about 20 minutes.

2/.   Drain - keeping 1/2 cup of cooking liquid - and coarsely mash.

3/.   Stir in olive oil, salt & pepper to taste plus cooking liquid - enought to give it a smooth texture - and then stir in spring onions and  parsley.   Serve warm or room temperature.

Pollo en Pepitoria - Castile - La Mancha    Chicken in almond and egg sauce

from "The Food of Spain"

I really loved this recipe which had a rich thick sauce to compliment the chicken.   My partner on the other hand - who has a strange childhood-related aversion to eggs - didnt!   I suggest you try it once and make up your own mind ... unless you also ....

Ingredients:

1/4 C olive oil    1 whole chicken cut into 8 pieces or 8 chicken thigh pieces    salt & pepper    I large onion, chopped   2 C chicken stock    1 C white wine (or plain water as wine is so expensive in Hyderabad!)    2 bay leaves    3/4 t ground cinammon    2 hard-boiled eggs    1/4 C blanched skinned almonds    6 garlic cloves    pinch saffron threads

Method:

1/.    Heat 3 T of oil in a alarge casserole, big enough for chicken pieces to lie flat.   Add chicken and brown all over, adding salt & pepper.   Remove and set aside; add onion and cook gently until golden.

2/.   Return chicken to pot and add stock, wine, bay leaves and cinammon and simmer gently covered for 25 minutes.   Turn chicken occasionally.

3/.   Cut the eggs in half and remove yolks.  Finely chop the egg whites.

4/.   Fry almonds and garlic in remaining oil until nuts are sightly brown.   The blend almonds, garlic and egg yolks in food processor or pestle adding a few spoons of stock from chicken.   Stir mixture into simmering stock, add saffron, and cook further 10 minutes.

5/.   Serve sprinkled with the diced egg whites ... or throw them away if your partner also has an aversion to eggs!   Either way this dish is a delicious riff on a simple chicken stew or curry.

Note: my camera wasn't working when these recipes were first cooked at my home so the pix will be added later when I cook them again

Hyderabad, India May 2012