Mango-ginger? What's that?

by Janaki Krishnan

Yesterday, my daughter's maid rang me up.

"Amma" she said, "Deepa tayi has bought something that looks like ginger. But she has asked me to turn into a pickle. What shall I do? It's a little like ginger, a little like tumeric."

"Ah, it must be Manga inji (mango-ginger)," I said.

Pale coloured mango-ginger in the foreground. To its left is raw turmeric, yellow-orange in colour. To the right is regular ginger.

Mango-ginger, a member of the ginger family, is closely related to turmeric. It looks like ginger - knobbly on the outside, pale yellow on the inside. It combines the zing of ginger and the coolness of sweet, sour, raw mango. Aside from this, the mango-ginger's got nothing much to do with an actual mango.

So I told the maid, "To make the pickle, cut it into small pieces, add salt, red chilli powder. You can also add a little bit of lemon juice if you like. It's delicious, and can be had with curd rice. Wait and see, Deepa will eat twice the amount of curd rice that she usually does!"

The pickle after it was made. Unlike other pickles which require to be stored or put away for a while, this one can be eaten immediately after preparation.

Mango ginger can also be used to make a chutney along with urad dal (black gram or black lentil), red chillies, hing (asafoetida), grated coconut and a bit of jaggery. This chutney is eaten with dosas, idlies and even rice.
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The Gujarati word for mango-ginger is "amba harad". My Gujarati neighbour cuts it into small bits, adds salt and lemon to make a simple pickle to be eaten with chapatti. Sometimes, she also adds slices of raw turmeric to this pickle. A Parsi friend cuts it into thin strips and uses it in salad. Another lady we know dices it into little cubes, along with similarly diced cubes of carrot and cucumber. She adds coriander, lemon and a little salt to make a fresh and delicious salad.
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Mango-ginger has excellent medicinal properties and finds extensive use in the indigenous system of medicine. It is an appetizer, aphrodisiac, laxative and an antipyretic as it cools down the body in case of a fever. It is effecive against bronchitis, asthma, hiccough and inflammation due to injures.
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It's too bad that this spice is relatively unheard of. When you get a chance, please try some of the pickle... there's hardly anyone I know who doesn't like it!

With inputs and edits by Aishwarya