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It’s that time of year when life seems like ordinary Mardi Gras. At least every restaurant, cafe, kitchen and home in western India is celebrating mangoes. Alphonso mango is dazzling and is in full season right now. Amaras are now a must on most tables, and mangoes such as Sliced Mango with Ice Cream, Mango Panna Cotta, Mango Cheesecake, Mango Peda, Thai Mango Sticky Rice, and Mango in every type of dessert have flushed our menus, restaurants, patisseries, and kitchens. Have given. Although I recently devoted an entire article on cooking with mangoes, I bumped into a woman who fed me mutton cooked in mango.
Mahrukh Moghrelia lives in Mumbai, although she hails from Navsari, a small town in Gujarat. By now, you may have come to know that he is a Parsi, but he is different from most of the Parsis you may have met. To us, Parsis are those little Englishmen, city dwellers who live not only in this sprawling urban metropolis, but in even more well-appointed colonies in Mumbai. But Mahrukh is a native of Navsari. She may have lived in Bombay for decades, but she still diligently holds on to her village-style Parsi cooking, which is raw and strong.
While their history places them on the coast of Gujarat, the Parsis made their name and number here in Mumbai. But small towns and cities of Gujarat like Ankleshwar, Bharuch, Udvada, Dumas, Bilimora are home to many Parsis who are yet untouched by the modernity of Mumbai. As has been their cooking, simple, steeped in tradition and season defined.
Most of us have eaten Dhansak and Salli Boti and Patra ni Machhi, but as you delve deeper into rural cooking, you find tempting dishes like “Gosh no batavo”, which are slow-cooked in a palm toddy. Gaya is a rustic, rural style preparation of marinated meat. Till it gets reduced to a delicious sticky, sweet and sour gravy. Or the Parsi-style chicken vindaloo prepared from ‘sarko’ – a barrel ripe sugarcane vinegar matured in Navsari’s famous EF Kolah & Sons. Rare dishes such as “cooked with black-eyed beans” or “bhaji dana ma gosht” – a spicy dish where mutton, greens and peas are cooked over a wood fire. Kurush Dalal, a go-to encyclopedia for the culinary arts of anything, and a heritage Parsi cook to boot, once fed me “masoor ma jeeb” – ox cooked with spices and whole red lentils.
By now you must have understood that Parsi food is pre-loaded with meat, fish and eggs. But for a daily dose of roughage, Parsis often cook vegetables but add meat to everything and anything. Thus we get ‘guar-ma-ghos’ (French beans), ‘bhida-ma-ghos’ (okra), French beans-ma-gosh, ‘cauliflower-ma ghos’, ‘papri-ma-ghos’ (broad) see you. -beans), even ‘Kakdi Ma Ghos’. ‘Cucumber’ is a cucumber or large pulp. And not to be missed, ‘tarela-kera-ma-ghos’ (meat with fried bananas). And so, if the season is defined by mangoes, so is their cooking.
Mahrukh Mogrelia, whose house I visited, cooked me a surprising dish called ‘kanda, kari ma ghos’, which translated as mutton cooked in onions and mangoes. The recipe seems simple enough. Fry the finely chopped onions till they turn brown and translucent, add to that ginger-garlic paste and mutton, till the meat is cooked and the color turns from pink to white. Add a bunch of spices, including ‘Dhana-jeera’, Kashmiri chili powder as well as spicy red chili powder, a pinch of turmeric, Paris sambar masala, and a little bit of dhansak masala and more onions, but the new white onions are in large pieces. Cut it in half.
Then you peel some perfectly ripe Alphonso mangoes, don’t cut them, and in they go. Cook everything with a little water until the meat is completely cooked. And you have this delicious golden colored dish. Tender pieces of mutton with a distinct flavor of soft onions, dhania-cumin and spices, sharply sharp due to red chillies and sweet thanks to cooked alphonso. If you really want to celebrate the King of Fruits, what better way than this.
Kunal Vijaykar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. What is the name of his youtube channel? The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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