I’ve never been much of a souvenir gal. I return from my travels not with nameplate key chains and trinkets, but with a camera roll so full my iPhone overheats. That, and an insatiable need to eat as I ate on the trip.
That was the case, at least, after a few days in Jamaica this month. Along with my memories and a playlist of dancehall bangers, I cleared Customs with a renewed appetite for fragrant mangoes, sour tamarind, juicy pineapple. Having grown up with a giddy admiration for guava and mamoncillos, I’ve long known that the best fruits are the tropical ones.
So here I am in New York’s own subtropical climate, scouring the Cooking database for their sweet-tart fingerprints. I wouldn’t mind another rum punch or piña colada to go along with, say, Millie Peartree’s cool and crunchy mango slaw, an ideal repository for any fruit that’s still a few days shy of ready. I’d like that very much with Gregory Gourdet’s whole roasted jerk cauliflower.
Oh, the mango. Few things satisfy like scoring the cheek of a perfectly ripe one, its juices slicking your wrists like luxurious perfume.
Mango Slaw
But if — and heavy on the if — you tire of mango on its own or simply sliced for slaw, there is always … mango with other stuff! Like David Tanis’s five-star spicy corn pakoras with his mango-tamarind chutney, or Zainab Shah’s sticky, sour and generously spiced mango chutney. There’s also this cilantro-mint chutney recipe, which Priya Krishna adapted from the cookbook author Maneet Chauhan, in which fresh (or canned) mango pulp “is especially key, giving the chutney a slightly creamy texture and a subtly sweet flavor.”
There’s Hetty Lui McKinnon’s corn salad with mango and halloumi! Kay Chun’s mango-avocado salad with lime vinaigrette, a mango-lover’s take on Vietnamese green papaya salad! I have a vision of pairing Kay’s recipe with Ali Slagle’s crispy coconut tempeh, which a handful of readers have successfully made with extra-firm tofu as well. (You’ll want to swap out the fish sauce in Kay’s salad to make it vegetarian. Try soy sauce, ponzu or a vegan alternative like Yondu.)
Now that I’ve depleted my little stash of tamarind balls acquired at the Montego Bay airport, I’m setting my sights on the jar of tamarind concentrate I keep in the fridge door. It adds the most pleasant tang to dressings like the one in Hetty’s herby tomato salad, far and away one of my favorite salads on all of NYT Cooking. The concentrate’s sourness is tempered by maple syrup, bringing forth its more citrusy notes.
Similarly, Yotam Ottolenghi balances a tamarind dressing with brown sugar in his turmeric fried eggs with pickled shallots, all on a bed of garlicky, wilted spinach. And like the vinaigrette in Kay’s mango salad, you can easily replace the scant teaspoon of fish sauce in this brunch-ready recipe.
And while my grocery store pineapple simply cannot compete with the pale-fleshed but impossibly sweet ones I enjoyed on vacation, it’ll serve me just fine skewered and grilled in Lara Lee’s tofu-vegetable satay with peanut sauce and razor-thinly sliced for the chef Hugo Orozco’s jicama salad, bright with chile, herbs and citrus.
OK, fine. I bought a key chain, too.
Corn Salad With Mango and Halloumi
Herby Tomato Salad With Tamarind-Maple Dressing
Tofu-Vegetable Satay With Peanut Sauce
One More Thing!
“Most of the mangoes imported to the United States come from Mexico, where they are typically sold to stores for less than $10 a box,” Priya Krishna writes in her article about the cutthroat selling frenzy of Indian mangoes. “Just 3 percent arrive from India, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, selling for about $30 to $50 a box — as much as $8 per mango.” Worth it. I mean, just look at these!
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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Tanya Sichynsky is an editor for the Food and Cooking sections of The Times and the author of The Veggie, a weekly vegetarian newsletter.
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