Mango!

Did you know that mangos grow on evergreen trees up to 60 foot tall! I’ve often found mangos can be a bit hit and miss in the UK- no doubt said fruit having to travel refrigerated all the way from Asia to here. But the last three I’ve had from Sainsbury’s have been juicy, silky and gorgeous, after leaving them a few days to fully ripen. Now you can do all sorts of thing with a mango… make it into a salsa, a salad, a drink or do that hedgehog thing if you really must. I prefer to let the fruit be itself. I peel and slice it, then sprinkle the flesh with a little lemon juice, a grind of black pepper and some torn basil. The lemon juice accentuates the mango sweetness, the rough pepper its smoothness and the basil its tang and fragrance. Now I must go and buy another mango…

Comments

[Judy Taylor]

To my taste, Alfonso mangos are best. Yellow, and smaller than the glossier, multicoloured variety, they are sweeter and never seem to have that hint of terps flavour that you sometimes find in the others. The season is short, but well worth waiting for. Otherwise, a good foil to a disappointing mango is chocolate/chilli sauce, ice-cream or sorbet (they work well with a good mango too!).