Green mangoes (17/5/09)

I’ve been waiting for mango season since I got here, and it is with GREAT pleasure that I’d like to inform you all I enjoyed my first mango of the season the other day. Mmmhmmm.

However, perhaps more excitingly, I also tried green mango for the first time yesterday. For a long time, I’d heard talk of these green mangoes. Some spoke of them reverentially, with glowing eyes and salivating mouths. Others spoke more disdainfully, dismissing them as ‘women’s food’. Some of my male colleagues were even ruthlessly teased when they confessed to being fans. Of course, this led to many a heated argument about gender stereotyping amongst my colleagues, and a great deal of curiosity on my part as to what all the fuss was about.

Green mangoes are basically just normal mangoes picked before they’re ripe, and served with lots of salt and red chilli. A lot of fruit here is served with salt and spices on it (watermelon, for instance) and usually I cannot abide it, despite my friends’ protestations that it just ‘brings out the sweetness’. Total rubbish. It makes the fruit taste foul. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be won over.

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, when it comes to green mangoes, the salt and chilli combination works like a charm. They go perfectly with the incredible sourness of the fruit, to make a lip-smacking, eye-watering snack (get the proportions slightly wrong, however, and you end up in physical pain, as happened today when some total amateur had clearly prepared our mango).

Luckily, there are dozens of mango trees outside the GBK office, now temptingly laden with slowly ripening mangoes. Unluckily, some big boss man has ruled that the mangoes should be left to ripen, and should not be eaten green.

Of course, this is not enough to put off a die-hard mango-fan such as I have become. I mean, the green mango season is short enough as it is, without any time-wasting tactics from the ‘management’. So in a quest for mango satisfaction, my friend Sarah and I have been perfecting our techniques for covert mango consumption. This involves sneaking over to the trees when everyone in the office is suitably distracted, spiriting the plucked fruit to the kitchen staff, then coming up with separate but simultaneous pretexts on which to visit the canteen.

Once there, we sit giggling and devour the fruit amid much wincing and smacking of lips, while the kitchen boy keeps watch.

This may sound like a lot of palaver but trust me: green mangoes are worth it.