Green Apple Sasuve - Green Apple in Sweet & Sour Coconut & Mustard Sauce

Apples -To most of us in India, it meant one hugely popular variety of fruit- red, crisp, juicy and sweet. Most of the times eaten as a snack. Then often used in crumbles, pies, fruit based custards and other desserts. And now with Washington Apples offering a wide variety of apples in different colors, taste and textures, we have apples which are sweet and buttery, apples which are tart and hold their shape when baked, apples which are mildly sweet etc etc. So apart from snacking on this delicious fruit, we can add apples in our salads, soups, chutneys, desserts and also a whole lot of dishes we eat on a daily basis, including our traditional recipes. Yes, we are now spoilt for choice even while buying the ubiquitous apple! 

Washington apples come in different varieties such as Red Delicious - bright red with a mildy sweet flavor. Suitable for snacking and for use in salads. Golden Delicious -Sweet again. Can be used for baking, snacking and in salads. Granny Smith - green colored, tart, crisp and juicy, you could use them in cooking, baking and in salads. Gala - apples with pinkish orange stripes, crisp and sweet. I absolutely LOVE this variety for snacking. Fuji - These are supposed to be super sweet, crisp and hard textured, retain their shape when cooked making them ideal for baking - I must, must try a crumble with this one now!! And then there is Honeycrisp which is tangy sweet, suitable for snacking and baking, Cripps Pink which is firm and tangy tart,  Cameo which is sweet and crunchy and holds it texture for long. Whoa - isn't that quite a range?

The taste factor apart, apples are antioxidant rich, have high fiber content, have almost no fat and no cholesterol. They can help lower your risk of heart disease, aid digestion and weight loss and also help prevent colon cancer.

Thanks to The SCS Group who organized an event on Washington Apples, we got an invite for a live cooking demonstration of Washington Apples by Chef Vicky Ratnani at 100 ft Boutique restaurant, Indiranagar. Chef Vicky demonstrated a Colonial Apple and Pumpkin Bisque - different varieties of apples and pumpkin cooked with herbs and Madras Rasam powder and it tasted too good (surprisingly so, I must admit, given the unusual elements in it)!! We ate an Apple and Jackfruit salad which was just as good and then a Green Apple Risotto with hazelnuts. We won't leave without eating a dessert, will we - we had Apple Crumble with Ice cream.

                                                            Picture courtesy - Shubhada

The best thing about such events is it really does widen your horizons about cooking. Reading and knowing that you can use apples in different ways is so different from actually tasting a variety of dishes made with apples. Now am really really going to be doing my homework before I go apple shopping for what variety of apples I could buy and what I could make out of it. Eating this very healthy fruit on a regular basis need no longer be monotonous. 

Since Granny Smith apples are tart and crisp, I have used this in a traditional recipe suitable for sweet-sour fruit...So here's to more of apples in our diet and with so many possibilities.. Here I have used it in a dish called as Sasuve, basically a dish made with ground coconut and mustard, usually made with a sweet-sour vegetable or fruit... The recipe Green Apple Sasuve.

The recipe is adapted from Ramya's Mane Adige, from this recipe here. I love sweet-sour spicy preparations like gojju and we loved this even simpler and easy dish with green apples in it. Thanks for the recipe Ramya!

Here is what I did with some minor modifications to the original recipe

Ingredients:
Granny Smith Apple - 1

Grated fresh coconut - 1/2 cup
Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
Roasted methi powder - 1/8 teaspoon
Hing - a generous pinch
Tamarind pulp - 1 teaspoon (optional)
Grated jaggery - 1 teaspoon (optional)
Dry red chillies - 5-6
Salt to taste

For the tempering:
Oil - 2 teaspoons
Mustard seeds - 1 teaspoon
Urad dal - 1 teaspoon
Curry leaves - a few
Hing, a few dry red chillies

Procedure: Wash, core and chop the apple. Take the apple pieces in a non -stick pan, sprinkle some water and cook on low heat for a couple of minutes. The apple will become tender. Take care not to over cook. The apple must be cooked without becoming mushy. Cool.

Grind the coconut, mustard, hing, methi powder and dry chillies with a little water till almost smooth. You want the paste to be very slightly coarse. Add the masala paste to the cooked apples. Add approximately 1/2 cup of water, add more if needed. Add salt. Check the seasoning. Add tamarind pulp and jaggery if needed to suit your taste. The apple is already sweet-sour. I added both jaggery and tamarind as I like the dish sweetish.

Now for the tempering. Heat the oil, add the mustard seeds. When it sputters add the urad dal. Allow it to change color.Add the hing and curry leaves. Add to the apple mixture and mix. Serve with hot rice.

Note: You could of course vary the quantities of jaggery, red chillies and tamarind to suit your taste. Use green grapes as Ramya did (you don't need to cook them) or any other sweet-sour vegetable / fruit of your choice. Cook or proceed without cooking as suitable.