Cooking like my mother

My mother belonged to the generation of cooks that cooked with ingredients they had. If a recipe called for something that was not on hand or not available or was too expensive, she could easily find a good substitute. Since moving out of India, I am trying to apply same principle to my cooking. There is definitely a huge variety of fruits, vegetables and spices available here, but every now and then I am reminded of a fruit or vegetable that is just not available here. 'Karonda' is one such berry that I have not found in US. Here  is a wikipedia page describing this berry. At my house, Karonda was used to provide tartness to chutneys and also cooked with green chilies in a quick 'karonda-hari mirch' pickle. In the tradition of cooking with ingredients one has, I have found cranberry to be a good substitute for Karonda. During Thanksgiving time, when it is hard to miss cranberry in the store, I cant resist making this cranberry relish the way my mother made kar...

Mummy made this sweet chutney using amiya, hindi name for unripe, green mangoes. Amiya's tart flavour makes it a good choice for pickles and chutneys. Every year, when amiya was available in the market, the sweet chutney is amongst one of the many pickles/chutneys mummy prepared. After making a big batch of chutney, she stored it in several clean glass bottles. One of those bottles used to find a permanent place on the dining table because we consumed the chutney in variety of ways almost whole day. Sometimes we spread it on top of a toasted bread for breakfast or snack, other times we ate it with roti/paratha with the regular meal, and then there were times we will scoop it on top of mathari or crackers or eat it plain like it was a dessert. 'Radha, now why does the picture shows apples and not mangoes?' you ask. If I were to pick one food related thing I have missed most about India, I will have to pick mango (atually there may be a tie between guava and mango). Ripe man...