Sweet dish | ashstylegourmet's Blog

The food available during the season decides the menu for most festivals in Indian homes. For us summer is the mango season, the market is flooded with lots of varieties of mangoes. The fruit starts appearing first in the market as the suns intensity increases from end of February to early March. March month sees the Badam variety of mango starting to appear on the fruit stalls. The taste of the mangoes is best as the summer heat peaks up. In today’s times many fruit sellers resort to methods to quickly ripen the fruits, but that alters the taste. With the market flooded with mangoes, the different dishes or recipes of mangoes dominate the dining table menu :). The summer months also is time for school vacations, and it was the best time during my childhood to enjoy as many varieties of mangoes. Too much or over excess of mango eating results in the boils appearing overnight , but still one would not care as it was vacation time. Also we had many local varieties of the fruit available brought directly from the farms, something that is greatly missed now as an adult, something that my kids have never even got to taste, as we reside out and here the supermarkets have fruits supply coming from many countries. Still I try to make the dishes with whichever variety of mango is available in this region.

Aamras is the sweet dish made up of ripe mangoes. It is just mango pulp, sugar and little milk or water added to get a thinner consistency. It is part of the meals as a sweet dish. When the aamras is made, then the kurudi or papad are also deep fried to eat along with the Aamras. Also, boiled homemade Sevai or Vermicelli is eaten along with the Aamras. This becomes a part of the whole vegetarian meal or thali. It is a popular and delicious sweet dish. The many different varieties of mangoes can be used to make Aamras. The best taste would be from Alphonso variety of mangoes, but I equally prefer the Junagad Kesar variety of mango that I used to buy when I was residing in Gujarat, India. The Kesar mango that we get is Gujarat is my personal favorite.

Currently I reside in the UAE, and the supermarket or vegetable vendors have mangoes from many countries being sold here. As I visited my home country in the month of May I was able to relish the fresh mango produce of Alphonso mangoes and also the Aamras. This weekend I got the Chaunsa variety of mango, a produce of Pakistan from the supermarket, and decided to make the Aamras for this post. The taste of this Aamras is definitely different, but when Alphonso mangoes are not around then this or whichever variety is available would do if one craves for the Aamras, right?! 🙂

AAMRAS & KURUDI PAPAD

INGREDIENTS:

Ripe Mangoes : 500 gms

Sugar: 25 gms

Milk: 100 gms

METHOD:

Wash and dry the ripened mangoes. Remove the skin using a sharp knife and cut the mango into small pieces and throw away the seed.

Take mixer pot and put the cut mango pulp and sugar into it and whisk the mixer on high speed so that we get a smooth paste. Add milk to it and get the thinner consistency as desired.

Kurudi papad, a type of papad made of soaked wheat .

The kurudi papad is deep fried in oil and served with Aamras.

NOTE: The amount of sugar used depends upon the sweetness of the mangoes.

The Chaunsa mangoes that I have used were extremely sweet and I had to add very little quantity of sugar for the mango pulp/cubes used to make the Aamras. Do use the sugar quantity as needed depending on the mangoes used and also the sweetness preferred.

Any traditional Vegetarian Maharashtrian or Indian meal for that matter is served in a thali form , a big steel plate with all the dishes for the day served in small portions along with the sweets that form as the dessert and served to the guests. It consists of two to three types of vegetables, curry, pickles, chutneys, papads, roti, rice & dal with ghee, and the sweets. When you serve the Aamras with the Kurudi, the meal served becomes a feast, the guests too are happy. This was the way we ate our meals in childhood, but now mostly only on festival days or special days, as any regular day it is usually not so elaborate but simple and more of regular kind of food.

Nowadays one mostly prefers to make mango milk shakes or smoothies, but do give this dish a try and serve it as part of a vegetarian meal or thali meal and enjoy the different flavors in your meal.

Wishing you all a good day.

ashu 🙂

Blogging is a very interesting experience. After each of my posts, there are new ideas taking shape about the next blog post, new recipe to write and share with you all. Most of the dishes that get cooked at home always include family favorites and new cuisines that I would like to try out. In the process, dishes eaten by me in my childhood or the one’s that my mom made back in those days, take a back seat. The idea behind this post is to make something that was eaten a long time ago, in my growing up days, and something that I have not made enough times for the kids to like it as much as I did. I can count on my finger tips the scant number of times that I have made this puri, hence I made them so that the recipe gets documented.

SWEET POTATO PURI: The taste is yum and I love it. The starchy sweet potato is a good source of carbohydrate and fiber. It is also a good source of Vitamin A and Vitamin C.

The puris are deep fried. I also tried to bake some puris, my effort to decrease the calorie count of the dish, but I did not like the taste, and also found them to be a bit hard to chew. Hence I ruled out the baking option for now, it needs more experimentation and changes in the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Sweet potato- 2 no. (Boiled and mashed)

Sugar- 1-1½ Katori or bowl (powdered. Use sugar as per sweetness preferred)

Flour- 1½ Katori or Bowl- Refined flour or whole wheat flour.

Cardamom powder- 1Tsp

Oil- For frying.

METHOD:

Boil and mash the sweet potatoes. Take the mashed potatoes in a round bowl, add the powdered sugar and flour to it, and make dough out of it. The dough consistency should not be too soft as we have to make puri. Add the freshly ground cardamom powder. Knead the dough so that all the ingredients get mixed evenly.

Divide the dough into 4-5 portions and roll them out flat, then using a cookie cutter cut out evenly shaped puris.

Prick these small circular shaped puris with a fork. This is done to prevent them from rising up in oil. Heat oil in a kadai and deep fry the puris to golden brown color on medium flame, then drain them on kitchen tissue roll and cool.

This is how they should look in appearance. These are bit soft to eat, but have a unique taste. If you like sweet potatoes or are willing to try out something different, then go ahead and give yourself the experience of tasting them. Looking forward to hearing your comments and feedback on this post.

Enjoy!!

ashu 🙂