I thought Am er Chat was just another Aam er Chutney, but I was wrong. So if you came here looking for an ordinary Aam er Chutney recipe, you won’t find one here. But if you are looking to make Aam er Chutney that means you have all the ingredients you need for Am er Chat ready. And Am er Chat is a much simpler recipe that will barely take any time or effort to make. So you might as well give Am er Chat a shot and make the chutney afterwards.

If you are a Bengali reading this, you know what Aam or Mango means to us. Jackfruit might be the national food of Bangladesh but you will be pushed hard to find anyone that would prefer jackfruit over mangoes. Because mangoes are everybody’s jam, figuratively but also literally in many cases.

Aam or mango is a great tasting fruit as it is. You can pick a mango from a tree, ripe or green, and then eat it as it is. Mango always tastes good but the process of eating a mango is fun by itself as well. When the mango is ripe, you can eat it by cutting it into small pieces, by cutting into three pieces, or by peeling the whole mango and eating the whole thing by hand. There are other ways that Bengali eat mangoes but those are much more difficult to explain in words. Then when it comes to eating green mangoes, you can again slice it into small pieces or long pieces or 3 pieces. You can eat a green mango, which is usually really sour, by itself or with some salt, or mustard sauce (Kashundi), or by making a mixture with different spices.

Mangoes, as everyone knows, is also a great tasting flavor. So anything you make with mango, be it food you can chew, juice you can drink, or flavored vape you can smoke, always tastes good. You know about the industrially made juice, jelly, bakery made cakes and desserts. But there is a great variety in the usage of mango in Bengali cuisine.

Green mango is more popular for its culinary use. While ripe mango is great for milkshakes and juice that are sweet, ripe mango makes drinks that are tangy and spicy due to the added spices. Aam panna and Aam Sorbot are two such beverages. But sometimes ripe mango that tastes sour can be used for these beverages as well. Green mango is used to make one of my favorite variants of lentil soup (daal) called Tok Daal (Sour lentil soup) or Aam Daal. Aam daal with hot boiled rice (bhaat) is one of my favorite summer combinations. Green mango is great for making different pickles or Achar. Ripe mangoes have culinary usages as well. Aam er Doi, Aam Payesh, Aam misti are some popular and common desserts. The sweetness of ripe mango makes it usually suitable for just dessert items.

There are some dishes that can be made with both green mangoes and ripe mangoes. And you have to look no further than today’s Am er chat. The recipe is more appropriate for green mangoes. The spiciness of kashundi and red chilli goes better with the tanginess of green mango. But our Shortcut Sokhina did not have access to green mangoes because of the season. So she made the dish with ripe mangoes. She picked ripe mangoes that are less sweet and more sour, so she stayed somewhat true to the originality. But the sweetness actually tastes good with the spices.

Am er chat is not at all the dish I expected it would be, I thought I would be tasting and writing about some form of Aam er Chutney. But the easy to make, fun to eat dish was a welcomed surprise. And most importantly, this was a dish I could even make in minutes without messing up. So if you have the ingredients, do try making it.