blog blong mama vivienne - mango season

mango season

The long awaited mango season has begun here in Vanuatu. We enjoyed a few mangoes when we first arrived here at the beginning of the year, but that was the very end of the season. If you‘re ignorant of the joys of mangoes, like we were a year ago, then you may be interested in this description. Our previous experiences of mangos amounted to seeing (but not buying) expensive imported ones in the supermarket, eating the canned ones occasionally and tasting the juice in fruit juice mixtures. We hardly even recognized what they were when we first saw them in the markets in Port Vila.

We have a mango tree near our house here at Talua, the fruit of which is for the residents of these 2 houses. Glen and Rachael, our neighbours, said that last year they didn’t get to eat any of this fruit as the local pikinini raided the tree before the fruit was ripe ( fruit is very rarely eaten really ripe here - maybe there is too much competition from critters like rats and fruit bats to leave it on the tree too long).

This year our pikinini declared that they wouldn’t let that happen and repeatedly warned off anyone who showed too much interest in the tree! They wouldn’t even let anyone rebuild the tree hut in the tree when tree hut building was the craze in the last holidays, in case they should knock off the flowers or young fruit. Unfortunately their good work hasn’t resulted in a very good harvest. There was an extended spell of very heavy rain a while back and perhaps that resulted in a loss of young fruit, but anyway we haven’t had more than a couple of dozen off the tree. Mangoes flower over long period so there will be a few more fruit gradually ripening over the summer.

Fortunately other parts of Santo have heavily laden trees so we should be able to source plenty of fruit over the season. Different villages sell their produce at the market on different days so it’s a bit of pot luck what you can find there on the day you go.

Anyway, onto the actual process of eating a ripe mango.

1: Either position yourself over a sink or basin, or else go outside. Make sure you are not wearing white or light coloured clothing, as mango juice stains badly (and in case you intend to go climbing a mango tree the sap is terribly sticky and impossible to get out of clothes!)

2: Bite or cut a small piece from the non stalk end of the mango, then peel off strips of skin downwards. If the mango is ripe enough the skin will come off easily. If you want to get the most from your mango you will give the insides of these strips of skin a bit of a suck before you toss them.

3: By the time your mango is skinned the juice will be running off your elbows and you can take some big, luscious bites if you want to. If you want to cut slices from your mango cut one from each flat side. You will not get many bites which come off cleanly. Mangoes have a large stone and the flesh gets more and more fibrous the closer you get to the stone. It should be very tasty so you will want to bite and suck as much of the flesh off the stone as you can. You never get it all!

4: Wash the juice from your hands and arms and then spend the next 10 minutes or more getting all the little bits of fibre out from between your teeth!

So is it worth all the effort?? Well they do taste wonderful, so much nicer than the canned variety - there must be a tremendous amount of waste in canning mangoes. But I have to admit I am looking forward to eating some simple fruit like an apple or a plum - not so much hard work!!