Mango & White Pumpkin Curry

Whenever I think about preparing a mango curry, I am often transported to my maternal family home. The walls were once painted in a kind of weird blue...I don't think anybody would use those colours now! there were so many rooms in that house-small doors leading to bigger rooms. I loved to accompany my mother to visit her mother and it was here in this house, in this dining room that I had my first mango curry.

The house is no longer the same, the third generation has renovated the place, most of the kids went abroad and are still in the Gulf and brought in the Gulf money and some of the rooms have shrunk,the walls have disappeared to combine rooms and things look more modernised to suit the requirements of the ever growing needs of man and of course one has to keep up with the Jonas, huh?-status is so important to most of my relatives.
Back to my recipe-so it was in this home that I was shocked to see mango in a curry that too ripe mango!! enjoyed it thoroughly, literally sucking at each bite.

 So medium sweet mangoes were diced and set aside. I knew the husband would pick up all the pieces of mangoes first so I added a few diced white pumpkin as well. You can add drumsticks/dry prawns if you want to make the dish richer(I have used Alphonso mango)
 Onions/ a few shallots were sliced and sauteed in a tbsp. of oil in which mustard has spluttered. As it turns translucent, add in a tsp. of turmeric powder,half a sliced tomato, one or two slit green chillies, a broken dry red chilly and then to it add the diced mango and the diced white pumpkin. Add half a cup of water and let it cook for a while on a low flame.
In parallel, grind some grated coconut along with a tsp. of red chilly powder, some cumin seeds,a clove  of garlic, a little bit of ginger to a fine paste. Add this ground paste to the curry as it cooks and toss it all about. Add salt to taste, you may dilute it to your desire.You can adjust the spice as well by adding more chilly powder if desired.

You can leave the curry like so or add some whisked curd to it to give it more volume and thickness. Garnish it with a few curry leaves. By now the sweetness of the mango fills the curry.

Advisable to let the curry sit for a while before serving so that all the juices are released and the spices merge with the fruit.This has to be enjoyed with a bowl of rice and a nice spicy pickle by the side.

Miss all those long bus rides Mummy and I had to her mom's. Loved watching the rapport between the mother and daughter-she was the only daughter among four brothers and such a pet to all of them.
Ammachi(mom's mom) used to chew betel leaf with arecanut. I loved the way she dressed that leaf with all those awful concoctions and put it straight into her mouth in some corner of her jaw and after a while of chewing that green leaf...she would spit out something red...Yuck! but boy was I shocked as a youngster!

Memories...miss u Mamma
Snatched away from all of us at the age of fifty-four to cancer. Two days back she would have been 66 had she been alive : (

I believe I have done an earlier post on mango curry. Hope you readers would go through that as well.