Mangoes
Mango season and what to do with them.
Mangoes would be one of my favourite fruits! They are delicious fresh or frozen - eating frozen chunks is just like eating a mango icecream, but messier, because there’s no stick to hold onto.
This year we went over to a friend’s property and raided their mango trees (don’t worry, we had permission and they helped us take as many as we could!). Our tree is very small and only provided about 10 very delicious fruit. Our friends had many trees and we ended up harvesting from 3 different varieties.
A “common” mango, which is quite stringy, but very good for cooking or drying. I made chutney and dried about 3 dehydrator loads. I like to use green mangoes, just as they change to a yellowish colour for chutney. This year I played around with making a mango salsa with these unripe ones. The first batch I fermented with some fermented turmeric paste, ginger and chilli. This was quite tasty, but went winey very quickly - after putting it into the fridge. The second attempt was more like a pickle but using vinegar - probably not enough sugar and way to tangy. The third attempt I really liked, although didn’t add enough sugar, but that’s easily rectified once the jar is opened. With this one, I chopped up green mango, spring onions, chillies, garlic and capsicum and placed in Fowlers Vacola jars with some sugar, salt, coriander seeds and lime juice. I then preserved them using the fowlers method, so they will keep on the shelf for a while.
Bowen Mango - which are my favourite to eat fresh, so most of these have been kept in the fridge.
An unknown variety - it has a similar shape to a common but smaller seed and no strings. It also goes very yellow/orange when ripe. The majority of mangoes that we got were this variety. And most of them got cut up for freezing. I did this by freezing flat on trays and then moving the mango to a big plastic bag in the freezer. This way we can take them out as we need them and they’ll be easy to make smoothies or nice cream or whatever else I can think of. I also did some of these in the fowlers vacola - just cut up and water added then preserved. (see the picture above!)
We’ve also been eating mango in any way we can and I’m also having a crack at making a mango mead, so it’ll be interesting to see if it turns into anything drinkable or whether I might have just made a 4 litre batch of vinegar!
My mango mead ingredients. It’s not really a mead when it’s got fruit in it, but I can’t remember the name right now, and mead is easier!
After straining the pulp, I put the liquid in this demijohn with an air lock. I probably should add some more honey water to top it up but may do that after I do the first racking. It’s still very active.
I used the discard pulp from the mead to make a spicy sauce - I chickened out adding all the chillies in the photo above - these chillies are very hot. The sauce has a perfect heat. I just whizzed up the lot in my thermomix and put it in the fridge. Not sure how long it’ll last but it was nice rubbed on a chicken with extra tamari and fish sauce and also mixed in with yoghurt and rubbed on some goat chops before cooking.
Breakfast food - basically a chia pudding with added fruit and then topped with yoghurt, more mango and some grainfree muesli. Very tasty…….this recipe will be in my next cook book!
This one will make it to the cook book too. Mango “panna cotta” for dessert, or it’s suitable breakfast food too!
And as the mango processing finishes another one will start……we collected quite a few Bunya nuts, so that will be on this weekend and I’ll post about it next week.