The joy of the Indian hog plum

Ambade, or Indian hog plums, are best-known for the sour tinge they add to prawn curry, besides their inner inedible fibrous part, making for an enjoyable chewing experience during the meal. While this smaller sour variety of ambade are found during the winter months, the larger ones, known as godd ambade, are available earlier in the year — during the latter half of the monsoons.
As the name suggests, godd ambade have only a hint of the sourness its better known relative carries. And if one still feels like relishing ambyachem sansanv after the mango season is over, the sweet-sour godd ambade make for perfect replacement.
The matoli markets set up during Ganesh Chaturthi are where one is sure to find these hog plums as godd ambadyachem sansanv is a preparation many families offer during the festivities. This version of the sansanv bears a stronger taste than the one made from mangoes, with the sweetness, sourness, coarseness of the gravy all heightened to make for a pleasurable assault on the tongue.
“Wash and skin the godd ambade and cut each into four pieces as these ambade are bigger in size to cook them whole. Its fibrous part is softer than in the smaller variety too and is easy to cut through. Boil these pieces in water with salt added to it. Once boiled, drain the water and some of its sourness goes out with this water,” says Margao-based housewife Shobha Kare.
Water and salt are added in smaller quantities again to the ambade, along with jaggery this time, and it has to be cooked further. In the meantime, roast urad dal in oil along with few seeds of fenugreek and dry chili. These ingredients are to be ground along with grated coconut and turmeric powder into a coarse paste. This masala is then added to the ambade that are cooked in water and jaggery.
It is the fenugreek seeds that add the aroma to the dish, while these fenugreek seeds together with the urad dal will give the preparation its coarse texture.
A fonn of bay leaves and mustard seeds complete the dish. There are other variations of the sansanv with some adding hing to it, says Preeti Madkaiker of Santa Cruz.
Godd ambadyachem sansanv is not to be mixed up with the more popular ambadyachem karamb, made during Diwali in Goa. The sansanv, of course, other than being made from a sweeter variety of ambade, is sweeter and its gravy is thinner in consistency than the karamb, which is made sans all the aromatic ingredients of the sansanv like fenugreek,and bay leaves.