Maavadu ~ Baby Mangoes

The summers in Chennai are characterized by heat waves, torrid weather, scorching heat, summer showers and will leave you dehydrated and dry to your bone; but every cloud has a silver lining, so does our Chennai summer! 

 

Chennai summers also bring with it the blessings of mangoes and melons :) I am crazy about green mangoes, I just cannot get enough of it :) and as for melons lets just say its my staple diet - dessert for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack until the very last melon sells out in Chennai!

So I in this post I am going to share an extremely easy to prepare recipe to help you preserve a slice a summer that you can relish through the rest of the year.

Maavadu (Baby mangoes in salt and spicy brine) 

Ingredients

1. 1kilo of baby green mangoes 
2. 100gram of mustard seed powder (dry roast the mustard and grind)
3. 10-15 dry red chilies ground to coarse powder 
4. Rock salt and table salt (according to you taste)
5. 200ml of oil (sunflower oil or sesame oil)

Procedure

1. Dry roast the mustard seeds and grind to a coarse powder
2. Dry roast and grind the red chillies and keep aside
3. Wash and dry the baby mangoes 
4. Take a think urn/ pot with a heavy lid add all the ingredient and mix gently
5. Every day gently shake the content of the pickle jar
6. Keep in a cool dry place and allow it to ferment for upto 3-4 weeks 

Baby Mangoes, washed, cleaned and left out to dry for a day

Mustard powder - coarsely ground after dry roasting 

Coarsely ground red chilly powder

A thick pickle jar with all the ingredients - mangoes, salt, mustard powder, chillies and oil 

In about 3-4 weeks the Mavadu will look like this :) 

 As you can see the mangoes would have let out all the juices in the brine solution making the liquid flavored well and the taste of the baby mangoes remains intact!

Its perfect side dish for curd rice, Sambhar, Dhal or just about anything!