Friday 3 July 2009

Kavey's Coriander-Marinated Mango

Dinner first...

Tonight I thought I'd make an effort to use up more of the contents of the mixed fruit and veg box we received from Abel & Cole last Friday.


Burgers with mushrooms and spuds

Wednesday's dinner was simple - Waitrose fresh beef burgers served with mushrooms (chopped and fried) and royal jersey potatoes (boiled and served with butter).

For dessert I figured I'd better eat the large mango - it was feeling soft and ripe and might well be past it's best by Friday, when we'd next have a chance.

But, as regular readers will know, I'm a mango snob. I prefer the wrinkly green-to-yellow Asian varieties of mango of which alphonso and kesar are the stars. The depth of flavour and the heady perfume of these mangoes put the fat, rounded red-green ones in the shade.

Sure enough, when I cut into the mango, which was perfectly ripe, it was neither as sweet or as flavoursome as I would like, though nice enough.

Mango - great condition, ripe but lacking flavour and sweetness

What to do?

A while ago I particularly enjoyed a salsa (served with empanadas in a South American chain restaurant) and guessed that it contained mango, tomato, red onion, mint and coriander. With that in mind I decided to combine coriander and mango into a dessert dish.

And for dessert - Kavey's Coriander-Marinated Mango

I chopped up the flesh, threw in a few spoons of white sugar, mixed in lots of chopped fresh coriander leaves and left it in the fridge for just under an hour.

Delicious! Though you can't see the juicy syrup that was created!

When I came to eat it the sugar had drawn some of the juices out of the mango flesh to create a delicious syrup and the coriander had imparted it's unique taste. The combination was absolutely terrific, even better than I'd hoped, and one I'll definitely do again.

6 comments:

Swedish Mike said...

This looks just awesome.

It's pure genius in (or through) its simplicity. I'll make sure to try this one very soon.

Mango and coriander go so well together and adding sugar to a tart mango just finishes it off.

Thanks for the inspiration!

// Mike

Helen Yuet Ling Pang said...

I would never have thought of combining these two ingredients together. Very interesting. Although I'm no mango snob, I do prefer some textures to others. In Costa Rica, my parents get given loads every week by their neighbours, so when I went to visit, I gorged on them for breakfast every day, along with free pineapples. So I'll tell my mum about this recipe!

Kavey said...

Ooh how wonderful - one of the wonders of holidaying in warmer climates is breakfasting on what we Brits call exotic fruits! YUM!

BeadBag said...

I love your simple supper - bet it tasted good. (Waitrose Angus beefburgers & meatballs are really nice!) Also like the mango & corriander - as Swedish Mike says - they go really well together.

Unknown said...

You have made a mango snob out of me too! Waiting for next years alphonso mangoes now. Dont want to bother with the rest of the stuff!

Pei - teanamu eat.drink.tea said...

I find it rather hard to get mangoes as fab as those I got in Dubai. Where do you get them (and cheap)? :-)

Pei - teanamu.com