A digestive after a heavy ceremonial meal or a childhood treat pounded together in the shade of a tamarind tree, it’s up to you to decide what place chukkumanam has in your life. It’s a simple, seasonal preparation made with new mango flowers and just-ripened tamarind, salted and spiced and entirely sweet!
A lime-sized ball of fresh ripe tamarind--the redder the better.
3-4large dry red chillies
1tablespoonof powdered jaggery, or to taste
Salt to taste
Instructions
This works best if the mango blossom is really new and the flowers crisp-tender and at their most flavorful. Clean the mango flowers first, by rinsing and separating as many of the blossoms as possible from their stalks. Set aside.
Toast the red chillies in a drop of oil, or just dry until browning and fragrant. Swich off the heat, allow to cool—the chillies will become crisp and crumbly, so crumble them into a mortar.
Now pound in slowly the other ingredients [tamarind, jaggery, salt], adding the mango flowers a small bit at a time until you have a reasonably smooth paste. Remove any residual mango stalks and tamarind fibres that emerge in this process.
Adjust taste—salt, spice, even sourness. You can add less or more of the mango blossom, depending on how much astringence (thuvarppu) you like.
Fashion into small balls and fit on the ends of sticks—neem works well if you have the trees around, same with tamarind, or use any lollipop or popsicle sticks of course.