Aam panna
The thing that saddens me most about being the primary cook in our household is that I end up being responsible for satisfying a lot of my own food cravings. Of course that guarantees me a whole lot of control over what I eat and when, it also makes me miss being younger when the responsibility of dealing with my food cravings was someone else’s entirely. At the very start of the summer in Bangalore this year, Amber and I were at Monkey Bar one Friday night and I was loading up on their aam panna cocktail, when I ended up craving, quite intensely, some real aam panna.
Realizing that if I wanted some, we would just have to make it ourselves, Amber and I buckled down and made a big bowlful of aam panna preserve. Even though I had never made any before, and neither do I have any memories of seeing it being made (even though I remember drinking it when I was a child), I felt quite certain that I knew how. To prevent an outright kitchen disaster, we looked up a few recipes online and by Sunday afternoon, we could be found sitting around with glasses of chilled aam panna in our hands.
Aam panna preserve
Loosely adapted from Sharmi’s Passions
4 small raw mangoes
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp freshly roasted cumin
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp red chilli powder
¼ cup fresh mint leaves
Salt to taste
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and wrap the mangoes with aluminium foil.
2. Arrange the wrapped mangoes on a baking sheet and bake them for 15-17 minutes, till they feel tender to touch. (To check, carefully remove the foil, avoiding any steam and poke with a fork).
3. Leave the mangoes to cool till they are at a temperature where you can handle them.
4. In the mean time, grind the mint leaves, sugar, salt, roasted cumin, chilli powder and black pepper in a small blender jar.
5. Peel off the skin of the mangoes, take out the pulp and discard the stone.
6. Add the mango pulp to the blender with the freshly mint mixture and and blend it till you have a smooth purée.
This preserve should keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. To make aam panna, add 2-3 tbsp of the preserve to a glass (200–250ml) of chilled water, and mix well. Serve over ice, with a touch of freshly squeezed lemon juice, if you’d like, and a sprinkling of more roasted cumin powder.
