Apple Chaat Recipe 

But Moni Dadi was not satisfied with that. Native fruits with different spices are mixed together to make Chaat or a form of spicy salad. Mango, blackberries are regularly used to make this type of Chaat. Even foreign fruits like guavas, hog plum are used to make this kind of spicy salad. So why not apple chaat? And that’s exactly what Moni Dadi did for today’s recipe.

Apples are available in Bangladeshi markets all year around. The year around availability makes it seem like a native fruit, I won’t be surprised if apples are the most sold fruit in a given year in Bangladesh. But that might be a stretch because of the demand of native seasonal fruits like Mango. Though I am confident that apples are the most popular imported fruit of Bangladesh.

Different variants of apples are sold in urban fruit markets all year around, unlike most native fruits that are seasonal. Apples are very popular among the urban and even rural population of Bangladesh. The saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” might not hold much scientific value but the people seem to believe it. They do believe apples to be a healthy dietary option. When visiting friends or family people take bags of apples as a gift or a form of courtesy. Anyone that’s sick is recommended to have more apples.

But even after all this, apples to us Bengalis will always be a foreigner. It will never receive the pedigree of being a “deshi” or native fruit of Bangladesh and all the love and appreciation that comes with it. Apple, to us Bangladeshis, is just apple – nothing special, nothing to show love to. It’s just a healthy fruit that we should eat.

Oranges are not native to Bangladesh either, but oranges receive some special love from the people. Partly because of the concept of peeling and sharing an orange with a loved one is just phenomenal. Also because oranges are only available during the winter in Bangladesh, so it is not as common as apples. The exclusivity helps oranges become more of a talking point than apples.

Being an imported fruit, apples do not have any significance, at least none I know of, in Bangladeshi culture. There aren’t any paintings, sculptures, folktales, or poems depicting apples in the region (again this is to my knowledge, if you know of any Bangladeshi art about apples please share them with us). Apple, the trillion dollar brand and not the fruit, probably is having a bigger impact in the modern Bangladeshi cultural scene. Which is a shame because as I have been going on and on, apples are a huge part of the Bangladeshi fruit market. Yet they never get the appreciation and love from Bangladeshis. Keeping the doctor away is the only purpose apple, the fruit, serves.

I couldn’t find exactly when apples first came into Bangladesh. But I am guessing that it was not too long ago and it probably never made it to the roots of Bangladesh, the rural areas. Hence while there are uncountable dishes being made with the native fruits, there are almost no food prepared with apples.

Watching western media I know of apple pies but pies are not really a thing in Bangladesh. And no other dessert item has a focus on apples either. Mixed fruit custard has apples in it, but as the name suggests – it’s made of mixed fruits so the apple gets no spotlight.

Industrially made apples juices are popular but their popularity is nowhere close to that of mango juice or lichi drinks. Apple jelly is a popular flavor for jelly but that’s also factory made. There aren’t exactly any home made dishes in the Bengali cuisine that uses apples. Munching on a whole apple or slicing an apple into pieces are the two ways of consumption of this fruit.

But Moni Dadi was not satisfied with that. Native fruits with different spices are mixed together to make Chaat or a form of spicy salad. Mango, blackberries are regularly used to make this type of Chaat. Even foreign fruits like guavas, hog plum are used to make this kind of spicy salad. So why not apple chaat? And that’s exactly what Moni Dadi did for today’s recipe.

This sort of spicy salad in Bangladesh is usually made using sour fruits like green mangoes. But the spicy taste goes well with sweeter fruits as well. So using apples to make the chat and it tasting amazing is of no surprise.

And the best part is, the dish is very easy to make. The cooking process is versatile too, you can prepare everything and decide at the last moment whether you want to have Apple Chaat or Aam (mango) chaat, because the different fruits are the only difference in ingredients.