Tamarind sauce or in Bangla (my family background) tetul sauce.
I remember it being around the house often as a child. It was always served during dinner parties or with savory Bengali snacks. Often it was store bought, but there were certainly times when my mom would take the time to make it herself as it really isn't too strenuous of a task.
You can buy tamarind from any South Asian grocery store or specialty food store. It usually comes in 230 gram blocks made up of the pulp from the fruit. It is quite tart as is, but makes a great base for a sauce perfect for dipping samosas or dressing up a simple dish.
My mom told be to use half of the block and soak it in water for about an hour.
I kind of broke it up in the water and left it to sit.
Then as I waited for the tamarind to soften, I dry roasted about a tablespoon each of cumin seeds and coriander seeds and 4 dried red chili peppers my cast iron pan. Once they started to pop and change colour I transfered it all into a coffee grinder and pulsed until it was a fine powder.
My tamarind was soon soft to work with and I put a mesh sieve that fit nicely over a bowl. I mashed up the tamarind in the original bowl until it was kind of mushy and then dumped it into the strainer. I pushed it around in the sieve to get all the liquid and pulp into the bowl and keep the seeds and skins back. Then I scraped all the leftovers back into the original soaking bowl and added half a cup of water. I repeated the whole mashing, straining, pushing around bit once more to make sure I got every little bit of pulp.
Next you need to heat about 4-5 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a medium sauce pan. I added half of my spices and cooked them for 2 minutes on medium heat and then added the liquid tamarind. A few pinches of salt and half a cup of sugar were added next, stirred and cooked through. After about ten minutes of stirring often I lowered the heat and tasted. This is the point where you decide how sweet or spicy you want the sauce. I went ahead and added another half a cup of sugar to cut down even further on the tartness of the tamarind and the rest of the spices to give it that earthy spiciness I love.
Cook it until it's at the consistency you like and pour in into a clean jar and stow it away in the fridge!
I was fairly impressed with my first try. I made the mistake of putting too much oil in my saucepan and had to drain the majority of it off the top of my final product. Otherwise the sauce turned out thick, rich and flavourful!
I've always thought my mom to be an amazing cook. Not just because most children say that about the the primary cook who fed them, but because she actually is. Everything she learned has been passed down to her from the women in her family. Rarely have I seen her look at a recipe. Generally it's always been a pinch of this, and pinch of that. Tasting and adding until she gets it right. And once it's perfected she somehow seems to remember the recipe for future use. It's always something that's impressed me about her. She makes a recipe she heard from someone else, and if she likes how it turns out, she'll remember it and make it again.
She makes the best samosas. Which the above sauce goes spectacularly with. She'll have to teach me how to make those next.
