How not to go wrong with mangoes

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t like mangoes. What’s not to like about them? The strange thing is that I’d never even heard about them until I was a teenager, much less eaten one. I remember watching that scene in Apocalypse Now where they get off the boat and Chef is talking about mangoes and being a saucier, and then they get chased by a tiger and Chef has a nervous breakdown afterward, and I remember thinking about mangoes and I’m sure I knew what they tasted like even though I’d never eaten one. I don’t even know if that’s unusual or not, not having eaten a mango by age 17. Maybe it’s because I’m British and I was born in the early 80s. I do have an unusual relationship with fruit.
Now mangoes are my favourite fruit. I’m not really a fruit fan, but I can always find time for a mango. That doesn’t extend to mango as an ingredient, though. When mango is abused into the position of being an ingredient, like in a cheesecake or something, that’s just a corruption of mango. It’s indecent. Or when a mango gets sliced up and mixed with chillis and chicken or fish sauce and noodles or something else, to make a salad. That’s basically a monstrosity, and the first slippery step on the path to perversion. I don’t have this protective feeling about other fruits. Bananas? I don’t really care for them. Mash them up and stick them in a banana bread and that’s far superior. Grapes are better when they’ve been left to dehydrate and shrivel into raisins. Raisins are better when they’re in a flapjack or some porridge. Let’s back up a bit, grapes are better when they get mashed up and turned into wine.
Lots of people have a special technique for preparing mango. Have a search online and you can find all sorts of step-by-step guides on how to cut one, how to make the pieces into nice little cubes, how to invert it to look like a hedgehog and all that bullshit. That’s not how to eat a mango. That’s for people who have so little satisfaction in their life that they’re desperately trying to claw back some control by slicing up fruit into little cubes. If you really want to enjoy a mango, you need to let go of your inhibitions and get a bit primal about it. Here is guide to how you should be eating mango:
1 – Choose the right mango
The mango should be big. Don’t mess around with those little diddy ones that fit in the palm of your hand. Your mango should be as big as your fist, and it should feel heavier than it looks. You’ll know it’s ripe if you can smell the mango aroma when you put it next to your face. It should be firm, but not too squishy.
2 – Keep it cold
Warm fruit is just wrong. Fruit in a pie or a crumble can be warm, but only because it was hot after being baked and then cooled down. Something fresh should never be warm, it’ll just make you think of mould and decay. Put your mango in the fridge and let it get nice and cold before you eat it. If you’re living in the bushes, build a little netting sack from reeds or something, and keep your mangoes underwater, in the shade under a cool waterfall.
3 – Get intimate
Your fingers are going to get sticky eating a mango properly. So is your chin. In fact, if you’re doing it right you’ll probably end up with mango juice all over your face. That’s part of the experience. Embrace it. Eating with a spoon will corrupt the delicious fruit with a metallic taste. And don’t be one of those people who spoils everything with a cocktail stick; those people don’t deserve mangoes. Tear open the top of the mango with your thumb and forefinger and peel it down the sides in uneven shreds. Juice will go all over your fingers, you’ll see the puckered and pitted mango flesh underneath. Get sticky.
4 – Be the apeman
The mango should now be naked and cool in your hand, perhaps a few tatters of peel still attached to hold it by. Now you can get primal; sink your teeth into the mango and tear whole mouthfuls off, scraping the fruit away from the stone. The texture of a mango is second in loveliness only to its sweetness, and the best way to enjoy it is to bite as much mango as possible in one go. The juice will dribble down your chin and fingers, drip on the floor, on the carpet, feel sticky in your hair. But you won’t care. At this moment you are an apeman, squatting in the treetops, devouring a mango as it is supposed to be devoured.
You now know how to eat a mango properly, so go; go and find a mango and try it out. Forego all other fruits and all other mango preparation advice. Your friends and family may shun you, people may look at you differently in the office, but you’ll never go back to the way you ate mangoes before.
