Green mango

Let me introduce my new love: green mango.

Mangoes are absolutely my favourite fruit. They may be my favourite food full stop. But until now, I hadn't investigated green (unripe) mangoes. Wow, they're amazing. When you start peeling the skin off, the mango scent just hits you. The scent and especially the flavour is of course much different from a ripe mango -- they are mouth-puckeringly tart -- but there's a commonality. Interestingly, the texture is much less fibrous than a ripe mango.

One great use for them is shredded in a Thai-style salad, similar to a green papaya salad. There are also Indian pickles and chutneys. But this recipe I tried from 660 Curries was fantastic: Mango, Bell Pepper and Onion in a Pigeon Pea Sauce. (I didn't have any pigeon peas, so I used yellow split peas.) This was tangy and spicy and just wonderful.

What does a vegetarian do with a meat grinder?

I love my stand mixer. Recently in an op shop I spotted an attachment for it: a meat grinder. Although they're not that rare (you do see attachments on eBay -- they can be pricey) I was so surprised to find it that I bought it right away without thinking about what I would use it for.

Quite some internet research later, I read that you can grind chickpeas for falafel with a meat grinder. And so I did. The falafel worked out really well. I convinced myself that this was because of the excellent texture, but it may well have been because the previous few times I've made falafel I have wimped out and baked them in the oven, and this time I (shallow-)fried them. Another vote in favour of the meat grinder was that it was really fun to throw the chickpeas, parsley and garlic into the hopper and have them come out homogeneous. (Okay, that happens when you use the food processor too, but I swear this was more fun.)

Emboldened, I ground some seitan, and some cauliflower, and made a version of larb with cauliflower 'rice' from Stone Soup. This was delicious! We had a green mango salad alongside (sort of along these lines).

Overall, I'm happy to have the meat grinder. It's a bit of a hassle to clean, but not that much worse than a food processor. I like that the stuff you grind comes out a uniform size. I also like that you can grind a large amount. I think the next thing I'm going to try is bigoli.

Stuffed okra

This okra was so good that even this not very appetizing photo is making me want some more.

It's Onion Stuffed Okra with Mango Powder from 660 Curries. Stuffing the okra is kind of a pain, but it is so worth it. You make a filling with ground up onion, chile, ginger, garlic and various spices including mango powder, then stuff the okra and cook -- at first browning them in a pan until half cooked, and then adding water and tomato and covering the pan to finish cooking them.

Two accidents worth repeating: (1) use tomato paste instead of fresh tomato, and (2) let the okra and its sauce burn just a little bit. The burnt bits were the best part!

The recipe made twice as much filling as I needed, so I used the rest of it in an eggplant curry the next day (based on Stewed Eggplant with a Coconut-Chile Spice Blend from 660 Curries.) Alongside that we had a split pea and mango dal (again, based on a dal in 660 Curries. Perhaps I should just note when a curry I make is not from that book?).

Mango season