BellyHealthy

A friend of a friend is reputed to regularly eat a mango with her hands on the streets of London, much to the amusement of the male pedestrian community. She is tall, slender, beautifully tanned and tends to wear gorgeous exotic colours (that I tried to mimic once, but just ended up looking like a frumpy beach lizard). With that image of a model (really, Charlotte, if you aren’t, you should be), standing on a bustling street corner, literally making cars swerve as she eats an exotic juicy fruit with her bare hands, let me bring you down to earth. Eating a mango is messy business. And for all of us born with only the usual set of human assets, you will make a mess and look rather silly.

OR — Here is how to make less of a mess, and do it the way I’ve seen it served in posh hotels:

1. Stand the fruit vertically on a chopping board, stem part up.  The stone pit inside is tough and fibrous, but the closer you can cut to the seed the better, as the fruit will be sweeter.  Slice fruit downwards, lengthwise down the two sides of the stone.
2. There will be extra mango on either side of the stone now, and I usually cut this off and like a cantaloupe or melon, slice the fruit away from the skin, dice it and use it as a garnish.
3. In each half of the sliced fruit, use a knife to score the flesh in a lattice pattern down to (but not piercing through) the skin. The more cuts, the smaller the pieces of neatly cut fruit, and the easier they are to pry away from the skin.
4. Now you can either serve your elegant-looking mango slice with the extra mango (from the sides) piled on top and with a teaspoon to scoop it out daintily, or you can invert the skin so the fruit squares can be eaten with your hands directly from the skin.
5. Standing over the sink, enjoy sucking the rest of the fruit off of the stone before discarding it, and let the juices drip down your fingers.

Now, when accused at parties of being the only woman in the world to be able to eat a mango on the go, using only her hands, and not make a mess, Charlotte claims to peel the mango like a banana.  Maybe I’m too messy of an eater, but the juices of a ripe mango just drip everywhere for me. Let me know if it works for you!

A note on selecting a fresh mango:

The best way to find out if a mango is ripe and sweet is to smell it around the stem end, and to squeeze it slightly. If it’s ready to eat, it should smell very sweet at the top, and the skin should give a little when pushed. If the stem end has a bunch of sticky stuff and the skin gives too easily, chances are it is overripe. Put it down and get another one — too-ripe mangoes have been known to give me a stomach ache!

Mango season varies depending on what sort of mangoes you’re looking for. However, they need warmth to grow, so typically when the weather starts getting warmer (March-April), mango season starts, but when it gets tired of being hot (August-September), you’ll find fresh mangoes harder to find and the price of canned ones go up.