Its mango season, yo. Such a great way to celebrate the first day of spring! The big red and green mangoes are alright but my favorites (the ones I wait all year for because they're still blessedly seasonal) are the little, golden ataulfo mangoes. I buy them by the case and A balances them in long lines on all our shelves and windowsills, an ever-ripening line. Then one day the first one is ripe and they begin to pile down on us ripely ,we eat them end to end, slicing off the two cheeks and then gnawing all of the leftover flesh from the large seed in the middle.
I have many plans. There will be cardamom lassis, broiled mango halves a silken mango pudding and a saffron colored mango salsa over wild salmon. YUM.
The ataulfo mango is different from the standard mango on a couple of points. If selected properly they are sweeter, the color is richer and so is the depth of flavor. You get none of the stringy fiber in your teeth with these babies, the flesh is soft and melty, no ropy bits to be found. The pit is also more slender so even though the fruits are smaller the proportion of meat to seed is greater.
Having a naturalist in the house is contagious. We were eating one over breakfast one minute and the next thing I knew we were dissecting the seed and examining the embryonic sprout end vs the stem end and letting the boys touch the papery brown skin. Its living on the window sill now in a tiny metal pot of water. Google tells me I have good odds of growing a mango tree! I'm for that.
Must be time to buy another case.
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