This is my childhood favorite recipe adopted from my mom's
kitchen. Mom makes it during mango
season. This is nothing but the sambar made
with whole ripe small mangoes. The small
mangoes are slit at the sides and cooked in extracted thin tamarind water with
flavored sambar powder. The special
thing about the recipe is that you never feel the sweetness of mangoes whereas
you could sense the mango flavor very much in the dish. I made this last weekend and everyone in the
family liked it very much.
Ingredients:
Ripe small sized mangoes - 4 (the choice is yours)
Tamarind - small lemon sized
Sambar powder - 3 tsp
Toor dhal - 1 cup
For seasoning:
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp
Fenugreek seeds - 1 tsp
Asafoetida powder - a pinch
Curry leaves - few
Oil - 2 tsp
Preparation:
1. Soak tamarind in warm water and extract the water from
it. The extracted water could be thin,
so you can extract as much as water as the pulp could give (say 3 cups).
2. Pressure cook toor
dhal until soft.
3. Slit the ripe mangoes at the sides keeping the base
intact as shown in the picture.
4. In a heavy
bottomed pain, heat oil and add the seasoning items one by one. Add the mangoes and then salt and sambar
powder and mix well.
5. Add the extracted
thin tamarind water and let this boil in low to medium flame. Once the mangoes have become soft and cooked
well, the color would change. Add the
cooked toor dhal to it and let it boil for 3 more minutes and switch off the
flame. If you feel like the sambar is
thin, add a tsp of rice flour before switching off the flame, however, I didn't
added it to my dish.
The delectable mambazha kuzhambu is ready to be served
with any curry of your choice. We had
with crispy cauliflower curry and plantain stem curry.
Usually, this kuzhambu is made with home garden mangoes of
small size but we can get these type of mangoes from fruit market
everywhere. The mangoes should not be
too ripe nor should be too raw, it should be ripe and firm.
The cooked mango pulp would be very tasty with mildly blended flavors of tanginess, hotness, and sweetness.
