Iraqi · Sauce
Amba
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with a warm current of chile, acid holding everything up to the light, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1 kg hard green mangoes, peeled and cut into 2 cm pieces
- 40 g fine sea salt
- 2 tbsp ground fenugreek
- 2 tbsp ground turmeric
- 1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds, ground
- 1 tbsp mild chilli powder
- 6 cloves garlic, crushed
- 150 ml sunflower oil
- 60 ml cider vinegar
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toss the mango with the salt until every cut face is gritty with it, pack it into a clean jar and press down until the fruit's own liquid rises over the top.
- Weight the pieces under that brine and leave the jar at room temperature until the liquid turns cloudy, fine bubbles rise when you tap the glass and the smell goes sharp and yoghurt sour, three to five days.
- Pour the brine off into a jug, then warm the oil, take it off the heat and stir in the fenugreek, turmeric, ground mustard, chilli and garlic until the paste smells toasted rather than raw and dusty.
- Fold the spiced oil and the vinegar through the drained mango, add back enough brine to cover the fruit and seal the jar.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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