Pickled Baby mangoes in a chile mustard sauce (vadu Mangai)

Author Notes

To be frank, I'm better off sending a sample of this classic South Indian Pickle to Food52 in lieu of posting the recipe for the contest.
It was a stroke of blue moon (super moon??) luck that I stumbled upon these beauties at my local grocery. Promptly got into a hyper selfish mode the first time I saw these tiny mangoes and bought all that I could, A week later they had fresh stock, after buying up 2 lbs more, I posted the location of the store on my Blog, only to have a gaggle of senior South Indian ladies make a beeline for the mangoes (& to think the cashier gave me a strange look when ringing me up!)
During the mango season in India, only the strongest fruits make it to a ripe stage from the cluster of 100s that bud out from the inflorescence. The rest of the baby fruits drop off at the first strong breeze. the best of these (i.e the unbruised ones ) are washed , dried, rubbed with sesame oil and then packed in salt. A week later the wrinkled fruits swim around in a brine generated by the liquid from the mangoes itself. The brine is then blended with toasted chile powder & crushed mustard to make a thick spicy sauce The mangoes are then added back. A few weeks of rest, and the end result is a delicious crunchy baby mango pickle and an equally delicious sauce that kicks up just about everything a couple of notches!
Although this is a classic recipe made in countless South Indian homes, I adapted this from Ammini Ramachandran's book 'grains greens and grated coconut' for the proportions and digressed to follow the technique that I learned from my mother. —Panfusine