Ripe Mangoes In Coconut Curry (Ambe Gashi)

An age old dish - ambe gashi. A coconut based mango curry. It is spicy-sweet and delicious. Whole mangoes are cut into 3 pieces with their peel on & are added to a simple, delicious coconut curry.

This mango curry was my grandpa's favourite. He just loved this delicious mango curry with rice for lunch & dinner. I grew up in a big fat family. My granny says, it would be hard to serve everyone with enough mangoes in the curry. So they used field marrow (Mangalore cucumber, Malabar cucumber) along with ripe mangoes in this coconut curry. My granny says, they sometimes used to dice ripe mangoes into big cubes to feed the whole family.

I admire the way, this dish came into being. Summers & mangoes are synonymous in India. So, mangoes that are abundantly available during summers in India are added to a simple yet flavourful, delicious, coconut curry made using simple, basic ingredients, that are easily available throughout the year. And this mango curry makes a hearty lunch, dinner when it is had with rice! Isn't that clever cooking?

Most of Konkani cuisine has been the same. It's using seasonal ingredients in everyday cooking. Be it ambe upakari, jeev kadgi phodi, ambe sukke, ambe gojju, kadgi gashi, kadge chakko, pathrado, k adgi phodi, b imbla gojju/bharth, k aju bharth etc., etc., It's a very long list.

If you love mangoes, love mango dishes or love sweet-spicy dishes like me, then I'm sure you'll love these mango dishes from Konkani cuisine too. Take a look at them:

Sweet, Sour, Spicy Mango Curry (Ambe Upakari)

Pineapple, Mango In A Spicy, Sweet Coconut Gravy (Avnas Ambe Sasam)

Ripe mangoes in a sweet, spicy side dish (Ambe Gojju)

Ripe Mango Side Dish (Ambe Sukke)

Ingredients:

To make this delicious mango coconut based curry you'll need:

1 ripe mango
1/2 cup grated coconut
3/4 teaspoon of urad dal
3/4 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1/4 lemon sized tamarind
1 tablespoon of powdered jaggery
Salt to taste
3-4 dried red chillies
1 tablespoon of oil

For seasoning:

1 tablespoon of oil
1/4 teaspoon of mustard seeds
1 leaflet of curry leaves

Serves: 2

Preparation Time: 25 minutes

Preparation Method:

Preparing the masala:

Let’s prepare the sweet, spicy, tangy masala first. And to do that:

Heat up a tempering pan, add in 1 tablespoon of oil, add in urad dal, coriander seeds, pieces of dried red chillies & saute them for a minute until urad dal starts to brown. Remove them off heat & let them cool down completely.
Then grind them along with grated coconut, tamarind, jaggery, salt using as much water as required into a smooth to coarse paste. (You can make the masala smooth or coarse. We at home like it to be smooth. My mom likes it a little coarse.)
Transfer this ground masala into a cooking vessel. Add about 3/4 to 1 cup of water and make the curry watery, a little more watery than semi-thick consistency.
This curry should be of semi-thick consistency in the end after cooking. The curry will thicken as it boils & further thicken as it cools down due to urad dal in it. So, keep it a little watery to begin with.
Heat up the cooking vessel & bring it to boil. Add in pieces of ripe mango to it.
Traditionally, ripe mango is cut into just 3 pieces without peeling it. One piece contains the mango kernel with the pulp on, the other 2 pieces along with their pulp & peel are added to the dish. But you can choose to remove off the peel or also chop mango into big pieces & add them to this dish. If you have to serve many, then that would be necessary, unless you're using many mangoes in the curry.
Once the curry comes to a boil, simmer the curry for 3-4 minutes until rawness of the masala goes off & mango pieces cook through. Check and adjust salt, jaggery.
Once the mango is cooked through & soft, remove it off heat. Then season the curry.
Seasoning: Add in a tablespoon of oil & mustard seeds into a tempering pan. When they start popping, add in curry leaves & let them sizzle for few seconds. Then add this seasoning to the curry & mix well.
Serve this mango curry hot with steaming hot rice for lunch or dinner & enjoy!

Side Note:

If you’re making this dish for many & are in short of ripe mangoes, then you can use field marrow along with ripe mangoes to make this dish. This is an age old trick my granny used to feed our big fat family.

In that case, keep the peel of filed marrow on (Mangalore cucumber), deseed it, chop it into cubes. Add cubed field marrow pieces into the cooking vessel first & cook them using 1 cup of water & salt. Once they are almost cooked, add in ground masala, ripe mango pieces. Cook them through & then season the curry.

Mangoes to be used to make this dish ambe gashi:

Sour, sweet mangoes are perfect to be used to make this dish. They make this dish delicious by imparting its sourness & sweetness to it.

Traditionally, local varieties of mangoes called as 'katt ambo/gont ambo' in Konkani, were used to make this dish. Katt ambo/gont ambo is the Konkani word for mangoes that grow on backyard trees. These mangoes are not from the cultivated mango variety & are sweet-sour in taste. They are tiny to medium-small in size & hence, whole mangoes were usually just slightly slit into 3 pieces & were added to make this dish. Take a look at 'katt ambo/gont ambo/upakari ambo' - local mangoes placed next to alphonso mangoes below. These mangoes are green on the outside but would be ripe on the inside.

If you can't find local varieties of sweet-sour mangoes, any variety of ripe, pulpy mangoes are good to go into this dish. Slightly raw mangoes would be slightly sour-sweet & would be perfect to go into this dish.

I'm told by my granny, mangoes that weren't very sweet or sour mangoes or not-so-tasty mangoes that were hard to empty, were used to make this dish.

Find more Konkani cuisine curry recipes here.

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