A Mango a Day (soon).

The first mangoes are here in the shops in Queensland. I hope for a prolific local crop and therefore ridiculously cheap fruit as last year’s was not good, for reasons I do not remember – maybe the weather, or maybe the fruit bats won the annual battle.

I can give no better a description of the mango than that in the very Victorian English Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (c1870)

“Of all the tropical fruit, the mango is one of the most grateful to Europeans. In form it is like a short, thick cucumber. The skin of the fruit is thick, and the interior consists of a pulp, which melts in the mouth with cooling sweetness.”

I love that old use of the word grateful in the sense of something ‘pleasing to the mind or the senses’.

The first mention of the fruit (as manga) in a European language was in Italian in 1510 - which is much earlier than I thought it would be, considering that not too many Europeans had travelled to its native countries of India and Burma (Myanmar) so early in the sixteenth century.

The interesting thing is that a mango in early English cookbooks also refers to any pickle resembling a mango, and particularly the sort made with whole fruit stuffed with spices and pickled (see the link below to the Cowcumber Pickle). India clearly gave the world this idea, and I am grateful for it. To pickle usually means to preserve by salting or immersing in vinegar, but the word is used loosely for other preserving methods, such as the following one, taken from a grand Anglo-Indian cookery book.

Mangoe Pickle in Oil.
Divide the mangoes into four parts rather more than half way down, having the bottom whole ; scoop out the kernel; stuff the space in each mangoe as full as it will admit of, with mustard seed, cayenne pepper, sliced ginger, sliced garlic, and grated horseradish; bind each mangoe with thread; put them into a quantity of oil sufficient to immerse the whole. Manner of preparing the mustard seed, &c. &c. - For fifty mangoes use five seers of mustard seed ; husk it, steep it in water for twenty- four hours, removing the water twice or thrice during the time, dry it afterwards for two days, reduce it into coarse powder; mix with it the ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, and grated horseradish ; make the whole into a paste with vinegar; stuff the mangoes with it; reserve a fourth part of the mustard powder to mix with the oil into which the mangoes are to be immersed. The garlic, ginger, and horseradish are to be steeped in water, and allowed to dry for a day previous to being used.
Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book. By R. Riddell, 1860.

In case of a surplus of mangoes in your neighbourhood, please refer to the following recipes:

Queensland Christmas mincemeat

Mango Ice-Cream

Cowcumbers, to Pickle in the likeness of Mangoes (1705).

Bengal Recipe For Making Mango Chetney, from Mrs. Beeton (1861)

Quotation for the Day …

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen. Joseph Conrad.

On Coconuts.

January 28

Francis Drake may not have been responsible for bringing the potato to England, but he did have some interesting food experiences. On this day in 1578 in the Cape Verde islands he was in search of provisions, and came across the coconut.

“Yet the next day (28th) our General sent to view the island [Mayo, Cape Verde], and the likelihoods that might be there of provision of victuals, … Amongst other things we found here a kind of fruit called cocos, which because it is the fruit groweth in clusters, hard at the top of the stem of the tree, as big every several fruit as a man's head; but having taken off the uttermost bark, which you shall find to be very full of strings or sinews, as I may term them, you shall come to a hard shell, which may hold in quantity of liquor a pint commonly, or some a quart, and some less. Within that shell, of the thickness of half-an-inch good, you shall have a kind of hard substance and very white, no less good and sweet than almonds; within that again, a certain clear liquor, which being drunk, you shall not only find it very delicate and sweet, but most comfortable and cordial.”

The name ‘coconut’ is a puzzle, and the OED almost gives up on it, eventually seeming to agree with the opinion that it comes from a Spanish or Portuguese word indicating a grin or grimacing expression – referencing the appearance produced by the three ‘holes’ at the base. One of the OED’s own supporting quotations however (from 1555) suggests that it may have been an ‘Indian’ word for the cry of a monkey, as the holes ‘doo represent the gesture and fygure of the cattes cauled Mammone, that is munkeys, when they crye: which crye the Indians caule coca.’ The credibility of this writer is somewhat in doubt as he says there are four holes in the coconut shell (‘there are seene two holes, and aboue them two other naturall holes’), whereas most of us can only identify three – so perhaps the expert had never seen one himself.

That the coconut is an incredibly useful tree and fruit has never been in doubt. One Polynesian wanderer in the 1840’s summed up its usefulness by quoting:

‘The Indian’s nut alone,
Is clothing, meat,and trencher, drink and can,
Boat, cable, sail, and needle – all in one.’

It seems to me that there is too much dried, sweetened (for Goodness’ Sake!), packaged, dessicated coconut in the world. Coconuts with their hard shells don’t have the packing and transport problems of soft and rapidly ripening fruit like the banana for example, but of course the problem for those of us without a single machete in the kitchen is how to extract and shred the flesh. I understand that there are special gadgets that will do this, but I do not have one. Do they work? If they do, I will try recipes such as the following, taken from The Indian Cookery Book, published By Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, circa 1900.

Cocoanut Rice Pudding
Soak a breakfastcupful of fine rice in water until quite soft; scoop out the contents of a hard cocoanut; extract all the milk with a little boiling-hot water, then boil the rice in it, sweeten it to taste with some date jagree or treacle, and put in a few grains of aniseed. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding-dish and bake it slightly.

Cocoanut Pittas
Scrape finely a cocoanut, brown it with some jagree and a few grains of the black cardamom seed, and set it aside; then prepare a pastry of finely-sifted rice-flour (it must be kneaded with boiling-hot water, and will not roll out); take as much as the size of a duck's egg, and press it out flat in the palm of your hand to the size of a large saucer; put a tablespoonful of the fried cocoanut into it, and close it up in a half-moon shape, with the help of a little water. Have a wide-mouthed large earthen pot of boiling water; stretch and tie over its mouth a napkin, and steam the pittas or cakes over them; they will be ready in half an hour, and may be eaten hot or cold.

Cocoanut Cheesecakes
Grate a good-sized nut very fine, and add to it four or five spoonfuls of rich syrup and one spoonful of rose-water; set it over a few coals, and keep stirring till it is mixed; then take it off the fire and let it cool; next mix the yolks of two eggs well with it, and bake in small paps in the shape of cheesecakes. The pastry for the pans must be made with flour and yokes of eggs, rolled as thin as possible; wet the tops of the cakes with rose-water; sift some refined sugar over them, and bake them in an oven at a gentle heat.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Diet Gurus.

Quotation for the Day …

One of these nuts is a meal for a man, both meat and drink [on coconuts]. Marco Polo.

Tamarinds, by Twain.

November 30 ...

Today is Mark Twain’s one hundred and seventy second birthday. I am not sure, but I think he is the third most often quoted writer who has ever been in the world (after William Shakespeare and Dr Samuel Johnson). His food quotations alone would last a long time as blog-fodder. I like what he has to say about tamarinds: “strangers eat tamarinds, but they only eat them once” – a witty enough one-liner, but the paragraph it springs from (from his story Roughing It) explains why no-one goes back to the tree for a second bite.

“I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, it will come off when the enamel does" - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.”

The tamarind (Tamarindus indica) originated in Africa and from there found its way first to India and the Pacific islands and thence to many other parts of the world with a tropical climate. The mouth-puckering qualities of the tamarind are due to its intense sourness – even when it is ripe it is very sour – and generally speaking it is not eaten from the tree but prepared in some way – as a drink, a sauce, a chutney or pickle etc. Medicinal qualities are attributed to it wherever it is known, and this was the first use of it in the West. It is particularly used in fevers – and no doubt the idea of a hot lemon drink for a cold derived from it, lemons being a more easily accessible sour flavour than the foreign tamarind.

A beverage or infusion of tamarind crosses both borders – the medicinal and the culinary. One gentleman by the name of William Vincent Wells visited Honduras in the mid-nineteenth century, and found it made a very refreshing drink in that hot climate. He called it Tamarind Ambrosia, and described how it was made:

"He [his host, Olancho] also possessed the art, from long practice, of concocting certain delicious drinks. Among these was one to which I invariably paid my respects. It was made from tamarinds, and usually served about noon from earthen jars, wrapped in several thick swaths of flannel, and placed in the draft as a cooling process. The preparation of this beverage was simple enough. From a cask of the fruit, which seemed to have been crushed to a pulp and liberally mixed with the coarse sirup of the country, a quantity of thick liquor was drawn off, in a partly fermented state, and diluted to a drinking consistency, which, when settled, was turned into jars. To this was added powdered cinnamon, allspice, or some fragrant herb (gathered in the neighboring hills), to suit the taste. The liquor, without the spices, is often used during and after fevers."

Most of us in the West know the tamarind as an ingredient in dishes from India, Thailand, and other parts of the mysterious East. Here is a recipe for tamarind preserve “from India” from a little book translated by the Oriental Translation Fund in 1831.

Tamarind Preserve.
Take raw Tamarind, ¼ ser ( ½ Ib.)
Loaf sugar, ½ ser (l Ib.)
Lemon, 1 chittank (2 oz.)
Having removed the skin of the raw tamarind and extracted the seeds, take ¼ ser and make a syrup of the sugar in half a pao (4 oz.) of water, and remove its impurities.
When it settles, throw in the tamarind and cook it, and when it acquires a consistency add lemon- juice, and take it off the fire and cool it ; and keep it, and take it out and use it when required.

Monday’s Story …

Hot Roots.

Quotation for the Day …

Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza. Anonymous.