Mushroom, mango and brie fondue

Last week was the new faculty reception at my library. Turnout's been lousy since the faculty realized we've dialed the catering back to wine and cheese. On one hand, that's pretty lousy since it's one of the few chances we get to pimp library services to a skeptical and indifferent audience. On the other hand, hey, free cheese.

Specifically, I liberated a big wheel of mediocre brie. I've been whittling away at it by eating it with crackers and in sandwiches with jamón ibérico and basil, but I wanted to do something more interesting with it. Not a lot of choices out there. You can bake it, of course, but the wheel was in two pieces so it would be an awkward process. Giada de Laurentis has a recipe for a brie, chocolate and basil sandwich that gets some mixed reviews. I was more interested in the pairings of brie with tart apple. I figured I could substitute in mango and get some interesting results. I was thinking of a mango, brie and bacon risotto, but I also had my eye on a brie fondue recipe and I don't think I've ever had fondue. So I thought I'd give it a try. Adapted from this recipe.)

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 handful dried cremini mushrooms, rehydrated and finely chopped (the original recipe called for an implausibly large amount of porcinins which were sold out in the two places I looked. I used what I had and, to boost the umami, added...)
a few slices of jamón ibérico, finely chopped (although jamón serrano or prosciutto would have done fine)
1/2 somewhat underripe sweet-tart mango, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup fruity but not overly sweet white wine
3/4 pound rindless brie (maybe 4/5 pound with rind), cubed
2-3 ounces goat cheese (I used Humboldt Fog, an ash-aged cheese whose fresh, slightly funky flavor nicely rounded out the brie.)
2/3 cup light cream
salt and pepper
parsley, chopped

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. When it stops fizzing add the shallots, garlic and ham. Sweat until the shallots are softened.

2. Stir mushrooms and mango into the mixture in the pan. Add wine and cook briefly to blend the flavors and soften mushroom and/or mango if they need it.

3. Add the cheeses and stir until they start to melt. Add the cream and continue stirring until the cheese melts into a thick sauce.

4. Remove from heat and check seasoning. I found it needed a bit of salt and pepper. Garnish generously with parsley and serve before it clots with bread for dipping. (The original recipe also suggested serving with broccoli. I didn't think it would work so well with the adjusted flavors. I did try grape tomatoes, but I didn't care for the combination.)


Not bad at all. Mostly cheesy of course, but the other flavors bring some real complexity. There are earthy notes from the mushrooms; sweet and tart from the mango emphasized by similar notes in the wine; some herbal counterpoint from the parsley. The flavors intensify as the fondue thickens so it's a balance between ideal texture and flavor that shifts as you eat which adds a bit of interest.

I just did a search and found a recipe with paired a brie fondue with a mango chutney. Not quite the same, but close enough that I don't feel entirely original. Darn.

Mamidikaya Kobbari Pachadi

[Hi,
I've noticed that people are finding this post through Google recently. If you're looking to reproduce a well-made version you've had, please look at my pictures and description down at the bottom of the page and let me know if I got in the neighborhood. I like what I made, but it may not be in any way "right" and I'm curious. Thanks much.]

Here's another recipe without much of a story behind it, I'm afraid. I just picked up a coconut, some mangoes and curry leaves from the CSA, and hunted until I found a recipe that used substantial amounts of all three. This is a raw mango-coconut chutney from, according to Sailus Food's website, Andhra which is a state in southeast India.

I found a fair number of variations on the dish, mostly varying the coconut to mango ratio and the spice level. This is about average in the ratio but it's tons spicier than most.

This was my second time opening up a coconut and my first time dealing with a fully ripe one. The husk was a lot more dried out and fibrous this time around which made it rather easier to deal with. I was able to get it all off without breaking open the hull. For opening the shell, I used the technique I've seen of striking the coconut along its equator with the back of a hatchet, rotating between blows and continuing until it splits. It worked pretty quickly and made a surprisingly clean split. I'm taking an inordinate amount of pride in an accomplishment monkeys and crabs manage daily; I'm not really sure why.

Some recipes specified using a green mango for sourness, but the green mangoes to get around here are just bland so I went with a more ripe one. I got lucky that the one I picked was fairly tart. I didn't think it was tart enough, though, so I used the standard Indian technique of adding tamarind to supplement.

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 1/2 Tablespoons whole coriander seeds
3/4 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
whole dried red chillies to taste (I used 5 arbols for a good bit of heat)
8 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 stem curry leaves, removed from stem

1 cup freshly grated (or processed) coconut
3/4 cup raw mango, peeled and chopped
1-2 Tablespoons tamarind paste, loosened in 1-2 Tablespoons water and strained
salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon whole mustard seeds
1 stem curry leaves, removed from stem
2 dried red chillies, seeded and torn

1. Heat the teaspoon of oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add coriander, cumin and chiles and fry for two minutes until aromatic, reducing heat if the spices start to burn. Reduce the heat to medium low, add the garlic and curry leaves and fry for another minute until the curry leaves become aromatic. Remove to a small bowl to cool slightly.

2. Once the spices are cool enough to deal with, add to a food processor and process for a few pulses. Add the coconut, mango and tamarind and process for 2-3 minutes until it forms a coarse paste. [Looking at it at this point, I have little faith that this is going to result in anything edible.]

3. Clean out the small frying pan, add the 1/2 teaspoon of oil. Heat briefly over medium heat and add mustard seeds. Cover with a splatter screen and heat until the seeds pop. Add the curry leaves and chiles and cook for just a few seconds to bring out the flavors. Stir into the mango-coconut paste.

Serve over white rice topped with a couple spoonfuls of ghee.



Once again this is not a particularly visually attractive dish, but it's actually really good. It's creamy (no doubt from the coconut oil) --a little gritty, but without that unpleasant dried coconut chewiness. The flavor is complex: aromatically spicy, toasty and sweet. The coconut and garlic are prominent, both pleasantly toasty, but I'm not getting any mango flavor beyond the sweetness and not a lot of tanginess from the tamarind either. Still, they must be adding to the gestalt. There's surprisingly little heat considering how many hot peppers went into there, but there's a nice warmth in the aftertaste. I'm sorry I can't explain the flavor better; it's not quite like anything I've had before. Really good, though; I stand by that.

Mango chutney ice cream

The title of this post is a bit of a spoiler for the end result. It wasn't my intent to make chutney. I just wanted to cook some mango down to concentrate the flavors, but I had the inspiration to add other elements and went with the impulse.

I started with:
1 large ripe mango, strongly flavored, sweet and low on fiber from the last CSA al-a-carte offering. I don't think Margie specified what variety these are, but they've got great flavor and texture. I ditched a few other mango recipes because I can't stop eating them fresh.

To the chopped mango, I added
2 fingerling bananas, firm and tart, frozen and defrosted. These are also from the CSA. They're unusual, but I don't detect a lot of their flavor in the final dish, so you could probably substitute one small Cavendish.

and
juice of half a lime
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large pinch salt
2 large pinches cayenne pepper
Salt and cayenne are traditional accompaniments to green mango and not unheard of for ripe. Try a slice of ripe mango with generous pinches of both; it completely transforms the flavor. And that's where I went from mango ice cream to chutney ice cream.

I cooked all that down for a good 15 minutes until I had 1 3/4 cups of richly flavored caramelized goop.

I then added
1 1/2 cups cream

and since it needed to be extra sweet for freezing:
1/4 cup white sugar

and to thin it out a bit
1/4 cup milk, and
2 Tablespoons light rum.
I don't think I've used alcohol in an ice cream before (although I've used it plenty of times in sherbet). With all the other ingredients with textural effects, I can't really say if it helped. Didn't hurt, certainly.

Then I chilled and churned. I deliberately left the fruit mixture a little lumpy to add some texture to the ice cream. They got broken up a bit in the churn and, interestingly, the fibers from the mango accumulated on the dasher to create a bezoar sort of thing. Convenient for it to be automatically removed from the final product.



The texture is beautifully soft and creamy straight from the freezer, but with a bit of solidity to it. It's not chewy but it doesn't melt away to nothing immediately. With each bite you start with a shock of salt, fade into warm rich fruit with a slow fade out to the bite of cayenne. When the ice cream has melted away it leaves sweet little pieces of candied fruit that bring back the fruit flavor in a purer form without the mellowing cream. It's really quite lovely.

What's interesting here is that cooked mango, particularly spiced and salted cooked mango, is so unusual that its identity in here is difficult to pin down. It tastes more like the white sapote ice cream I made than fresh mango, but it doesn't taste quite like that either. I could see mis-identifying it as French vanilla with some obscure fruit mixed in, which is odd as it contains neither vanilla nor eggs. I think I said something similar about one of the dishes at the Mango Brunch at the Fairchild last year. Is it just me?

I'm curious what it might be like with some other more readily recognizable cooked fruit--blueberries or apples, maybe. That'll probably just taste like cobbler with a scoop of ice cream on top. Not that would be a bad thing.

Shrimp and mango curry

I was searching for "shrimp" and "curry leaves" when I came across quite a few mango curry recipes. I had no idea such a thing existed and I've got to admit to being skeptical. The shrimp and mango curries were the oddest of the lot--the others were really more glorified chutneys--so that's what I decided to try. But most of them called for ingredients I didn't have or I just didn't like the look of so I added shrimp to this vegetarian mango curry instead:


Mango curry
by Madhur Jaffrey

Serves 4-6 Vegetarian

mango
Preparation time less than 30 mins
Cooking time 30 mins to 1 hour

Ingredients

3 medium ripe mangoes, peeled pit removed and flesh cut into 1cm/½in pieces
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1-1½ tsp salt
55g/2oz jaggery or brown sugar, if needed
310g/11oz coconut, freshly grated
3-4 fresh hot green chillies, coarsely chopped
½ tbsp cumin seeds
290ml/½ pint natural yoghurt, lightly beaten
2 tbsp coconut oil or any other vegetable oil
½ tsp brown mustard seeds
3-4 dried hot red chillies, broken into halves
½ tsp fenugreek seeds [I'm all out. I need to restock.]
10-12 fresh curry leaves, if available

Method

1. Put the mangoes in a medium-sized pan. Add 250ml/9fl oz water. Cover and stew for 8-10 minutes over a medium-low heat. Stir occasionally. Add the turmeric, cayenne pepper and salt. Stir well. (If the mangoes are not sweet enough, add the jaggery or brown sugar to make the dish sweeter.)

2. Meanwhile, put the coconut, green chillies and cumin seeds in to a blender. Add 250ml/9fl oz water and blend to a fine paste.

3. When the mangoes are cooked, mash them to a pulp. Add the coconut paste. Mix. Cover and simmer over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture becomes thick. This should take about 10-15 minutes. Add the yoghurt and heat, stirring, until just warmed through. Do not let the mixture come to the boil. Remove from the heat and put to one side. Check for seasoning. [I didn't get the fine paste required in step two so I used a stick blender to smooth things out at this point.]

4. Heat the oil in a small pan over a medium-high heat. When hot, add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds begin to pop (a matter of a few seconds) add the chillies, fenugreek seeds and the curry leaves. Stir and fry for a few seconds until the chillies darken. Quickly add the contents of the small pan to the mangoes. Stir to mix.

For the shrimp, I peeled and deveined them (some of the shrimp curries left the shells on) and tossed them with the salt and spices to soak in some flavor as the mangoes cooked down. It's a good technique to bring out the shrimp's flavor and a lot faster than brining. I'll have to remember that.



And the end result is just as good as it looks: really awful. It's warm, vaguely sweet grainy gritty yogurt. You can't really taste the mango; you can't taste any coconut and there's barely a hint of spice. Strain it and cool it and you might have a decent lassi. But as dinner? Feh.

So what went wrong here? First off the mangoes. They were under-ripe and not very flavorful. That's my fault there. A lot of mango curries did call for green mango so I thought it might work, but I should have stopped the moment I cut into the first mango and found out how mild its flavor was. Also, these are probably the wrong sort of mango. From what I've been reading I gather that Indian mangoes are rather tart and even if these were ripe, they weren't tending in that direction. And third, how large are Indian mangoes? I may have used far too much or far too little fruit. I dunno.

Second, the coconut. There was way too much of it. I suspect a mistake in the original recipe. Maybe if the water to coconut ratio was higher it would have actually blended into the paste it was supposed to. Or maybe freezing does something to coconut that keeps it from doing that. And it was quite tasteless. I'll bet real freshly grated coconut would worked much better. You'd think I could get that more easily around here.

Third, the yogurt. Is Indian yogurt thick like Greek or thin? Is it supposed to be tangy or mild? I'm guessing thick and mild since thin and tangy sure as heck didn't help. ...I've just done a little more research and confirmed that. I'll have to strain the remaining yogurt to get the right consistency for the next dish I'm using it in. But I think I'll cook something without curry leaves first. I'm getting a little sick of them at this point.

Caramelized Mango Ice Cream

One year ago today I made my first batch of ice cream. It was mango season and a co-worker had dumped a bag full of mangoes on me with the demand that I make something out of them and bring it back in. There are not a great many appealing mango recipes out there but I did find one for caramelized mango ice cream that looked promising. Failing to find an ice cream churn to borrow I went out and bought a cheap one from Sears. The recipe I made was this one and the results were not so great.

My inexperience was partially to blame as were the inadequacies of my ice cream churn. The big issue was that I didn't realize that Miami backyard mangoes tend to be larger than supermarket mangoes directions calling for "two large ripe mangoes" need some reinterpretation. Combine that with not remembering that ice cream tends to expand as air gets churned in and comic hijinks ensue.

I figure, though, a year's experience counts for something. I should be able to make a few adjustments and make the recipe turn out right.

First off is the question of how much mango I'm actually supposed to be using. The recipe says it makes one quart. The main ingredients are "one mango", "two large ripe mangoes" and two cups of heavy cream so that's two cups of chopped mango. I split it half a cup for the one caramelized mango and one and a half for the two large mangoes that get blended with the cream. I used the firm but fiberless Ford mango I got at the Mango Festival last week for caramelization and for half of the blend-in. I had good results blending the more fibrous backyard mango I got this year from the aforementioned co-worker for sherbet so I used that for the rest of the blend-in. The Ford turned out to have a fairly mild not-too-sweet flavor so the stronger and sweeter flavor of the backyard mango was important too.

I didn't want to make a lot of other changes so I could actually say I made this recipe so I just lightened it up by using half and half instead of heavy cream and bumped the sugar from 1/3 to 1/2 a cup and added a bit of vanilla.

The first time I made this the caramelization went poorly as the mango just dissolved into the sugar. The Ford mango held up better but I didn't didn't cook the sugar long enough for it to harden and give the pieces a good coating. I used turbinado sugar and the retained molasses gave some nice flavor but threw off my judgment of sugar cooking stage by color. Still, I don't think anyone's going to complain about streaks of caramel mixed through the ice cream.

So, into the churn with it and twenty minutes later it's nicely thickened up. The texture is a bit grainy but the flavor is a straightforward mango and cream with notes of molasses even before I mixed in the caramelized mango bits. Not bad.

After ripening, however, the grainy aspect of the texture was more pronounced and the mango flavor faded away. It's really not a whole lot different from a year ago and it's not a whole lot of good so I'm going to go ahead and say that this recipe just doesn't work.

The interesting question is why not? The mango colada sherbet had a creamier texture and stronger mango flavor event with other fibrous and flavorful fruit in it. I'm going to have to blame the fat in the dairy. I can understand how that's damping down the flavor of the mango but I don't understand what's going on with the texture. Not sure I care either as I have no intention of making this recipe again. Well, maybe I'll try again next year.

OK, I've had another bowl and while the flavors don't really pop like many of my recipes have been doing lately, it's not really bad. It's just on the mild and simple side and the texture's fine if you let it melt a bit. I'll bet if I switched up the cup of milk for coconut milk and added some ginger that would be enough to get it to work. I'll have to make a note for next mango season.

Mango colada sherbet

After my (entirely incidentally low-fat, low-calorie and vegan) piña colada sherbet surpassed expectations so spectacularly a couple weeks ago I've been eager to try some variations both because they'll probably taste really good and to figure out exactly what I did right.

This week, with the bounty of mangoes from both festivals and backyards, the variation to try was obvious. I could have just switched out the bananas, but I decided to increase the amount of mango. I wanted the mangoes to be predominant and also I was using freezer-burnt pre-packed pineapple chunks instead of the really nice fresh pineapple I had last time so best if they don't stand out too much. Also, I changed up the fiddly bits to match the new flavors. As I'm newly educated as to mango varieties I gave the sort to use a bit of thought. I wanted something with a bit of fiber to help the sherbet thicken, sweet so I can use less sugar and with a bold flavor as the cold tends to tone things down. But after all that thought I remembered that I didn't actually have a lot of options and I used the mangoes a co-worker brought in. Close enough.


Here's what I came up with:

1 1/2 cups chopped mango (extra-ripe mushy bits are fine. It's all going into the blender)
1 cup chopped pineapple
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup Splenda blend)
juice from 1/2 lime
2 Tablespoons light rum
1 pinch salt
1 dash dried ginger powder (or equivalent in ground fresh ginger. I have a dried ginger root that I grated using a microplane.)
1 dash cinnamon (fresh grated again is better)
1 dash allspice (you could probably use a spice grinder on dried allspice berries if you wanted. I haven't tried it so I don't know if it makes much of a difference.)

Put it all in a blender. Blend smooth. Chill to 40 degrees F. Churn and ripen.

I also chopped a frozen banana into 1/2 inch cubes and mixed it in as I removed the sherbet from the churn, but that's optional.


The results are about as good as the original piña colada, which is to say very good indeed. Each bite starts with pineapple, fades into mango and lingers with the richness of the spices unless you get a bite with banana which takes over as the mango fades and gives a nice chew to contrast with the creamy melt-away smoothness of the sherbet. This would work perfectly in bellinis with a particularly dry champagne. The sweetness of the sherbet isn't cloying but it lingers and it could use something to cut through. Failing the champagne, a cup of coffee isn't a bad idea.

So it looks like the bananas weren't necessary to the texture of the sherbet. I'll have to compare coconut milk and milk milk to see how much difference that substitution makes both to texture and to healthiness. Coconut oil is just about the least healthy fat out there and while I don't think it's made from the same bits coconut milk is I can't imagine the fat in coconut milk is any better. Luckily there's not a heck of a lot of it in one cup. Substituting in real milk would also expand the possible flavors beyond the tropical. Like I said, I'll have to give this some consideration.

My visit to the Mango Brunch

For those who didn't read my previous post, the Ninth Annual Mango Brunch was held today (see this post's header for the date) at the Sixteenth Annual International Mango Festival. The menu included dishes featuring mangoes from seven prominent local chefs. I'll go over exactly who made what as I talk about each plate but I'll just say up top that there was a lot of tasty and interesting food and I had a pretty good time.

The brunch was held in the Fairchild's Garden House. It looked like it held about 150 people at around 20 round banquet tables. The guests were mainly members of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden where the festival and brunch were held. A lot of people knew each other and folks seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was also a stage piled high with 200 varieties of mango taken from Fairchild's collections. Later that afternoon they were all auctioned off, but without samples to taste I presume everyone was just donating money and getting some random mangoes as a thank you gift.

Before heading in we all had to check in with the organizers at a table outside to find out which table we were assigned to. As is entirely typical for me, mine was the one name that got left off the list. So while everyone else was inside the air conditioned room mingling and sipping mango Bellinis, I was outside in the muggy heat waiting for them to set up a card table in the corner. The Bellinis weren't that good anyway.

Actually, I didn't mind. When they found my seat half way through the pre-dinner speeches it turned out to be uncomfortably cramped and I would have bothered people with my note-taking and photography so I went right back. The card table was roomy and they sat a couple guests of the festival there so I wasn't a spectacle all by myself. One of the guests was a fellow from India who, as a hobby, worked to overturn the ban on exporting Indian mangoes to the U.S. That consisted of finding a viable method of eliminating Indian fruit flies from their mango shipments. He traveled to the festival at his own expense to introduce Indian mangoes to the American market. I guess that means there's a more professional element to the festival that we gawping tourists don't get to see. (...OK, I read in the schedule that that was Friday's Grower's Summit, Field Tour and Reception.) We talked a bit about the U.S. public's perception of mangoes and where other varieties than the two standard supermarket types could make in-roads. He hadn't heard of Slow Food so I may have been helpful by recommending he look into working with them.

The meal itself began with an amuse bouche trio. There were a couple slices of mango: one of the tied winners of the previous day's taste test, Nam Doc Mai (described in the brochure's Curator's Choice section as having "a smooth, silky texture and extreme sweetness and bouquet") and the first runner up, Champagne, which didn't make it into Curator's Choice at all. I preferred the Champagne mango myself as I thought it had a deeper, more complex flavor. And there was also a small piece of brie with a mango chutney (out of a bottle from Whole Foods according to the menu). Not a terribly successful pairing I thought. That took us through the speechifying, the contents of which I included in the previous post, and it was time to line up at the various chefs' stations and see what they've got on offer.

First up was the Florida crab salad with mango vinaigrette, citrus mint salad and crispy potato by Chef John Suley from Joley. That's what it says on the menu, anyway. No citrus mint salad was in evidence and the little cubes of mango were unadvertised. It could have used some mint salad; the sweetness of the mango paired nicely with the sweetness of the crab, but the mango's flavor faded fast and then you were just eating crab. Pretty good crab, though. The potato crisp wasn't crisp but it was plenty potato which gave the straightforward pairing some needed complexity. I'm curious if fried potato and mango would work together without the crab. I might give that a try.

Next was a selection of appetizers and desserts from Chef Phillipe Ruiz from Palme D'or. I saved the desserts for the end, but the appetizers included a baby shrimp salad with tropical fruit and fresh coriander, a foie gras terrine with brioche toast and mango chutney (not pictured as I missed it and went back for it later) and a slice of banana in a spiced mango sauce. I didn't much like the baby shrimp dish mainly because these are the same mushy baby shrimp you can buy frozen in the 99 cent store. The flavor combination was nice enough--I've made ceviche with similar ingredients--but the texture was unpleasant. I didn't care for the foie gras dish either. For me, foie gras and mango just aren't going to work together and an over-sweet crumbly brioche toast doesn't help. On the other hand, the banana was very nice, mostly due to the coriander and citrus rounding out and blunting the sweetness of the mango sauce. Maybe that was supposed to be a dessert, but it was savory enough to work at the beginning of the meal. That's Ruiz's version of a mango Bellini in the background there. I liked his flavors better than the one I had earlier, but his mango caviar gave me the creeps the same way bubble tea does. The mango ice in the one that opened the brunch was a better presentation.

The next course was an alligator sausage with white bean ragout, mango chutney and an herbal confetti garnish by Chef Allen Susser from Chef Allen's. I think this is the first time I've had alligator. They say it tastes like chicken and, in this case, it pretty much did. But I like chicken sausage with white beans so that's fine by me. When I cook something like that I'll usually compliment the flavors with cumin and chili, but the cilantro, marjoram, thyme and mango pushed it into a different direction I wouldn't have thought of but makes sense in retrospect. The earthy flavors of the beans and alligator make a base that a variety of bright flavors can work on top of including sweet and herbal. So, not my favorite of the day, but nice.

Next up, a spicy bigeye tuna and mango taco by Chef Sean Bernal from Oceanaire Seafood Room. Despite spicy being there in the name (and a bottle of Tabasco at the chef's table), the taco was more of a fine balance of savory and sweet with a good use of finishing salt to brighten up the flavors and give a little bit of extra texture. The tuna itself was chopped very nearly into a paste so it was a creamy contrast to the crisp shell and crunchy salt.

On the other side of the plate was my favorite dish of the day: coconut encrusted pineapple with smoked duck bacon, mango sauce and tangy mango chutney by Chef Sean Brasel from Touch. I had a very hard time getting my impressions down on paper for this dish because each of the components was multifaceted on its own so the combination had a great deal going on. The pineapple by itself was crisp then chewy, savory then sweet and shocking with the unexpectedness of hot pineapple. The mango chutney is entirely unrecognizable as mango and barely seems like fruit with its deep spice and firm bite. I've had pickled watermelon rind that was similar but that's about it. The mild smokiness of the duck and the sweet mango sauce are more familiar. Despite the complexity, it all came together harmoniously. I was very impressed and I'm definitely going out to Miami Beach for dinner at Touch. [Note from a year later: I didn't.]

And that leaves dessert. Chef Erick Jones from Talulah made Belgian waffles with fresh mango and mango butter. This didn't really work out well, probably because it sat out too long. A good Belgian waffle should be crispy on the outside and airy on the inside, but this was spongy all the way through. Combine that with the almost slimy texture of the mango butter (not mango infused butter, but mango butter in the apple butter sense) that you probably can't see in the back of picture and the experience was rather unpleasant.

But there were still Chef Ruiz's pastry chef's mango profiterole and trifle which were both straightforwardly yummy and beautifully presented. A very nice finish with a cup of Rwanda Karaba fair trade coffee.

And I nearly forgot the basket of mango breads and pastries by Chef Frank Randazzo from Creative Tastes Catering. In fact, I did forget about them during the meal so I wrapped a couple up in napkins and took them home. There's a mango cream cheese strudel. It's interestingly light on the sugar--nearly savory. I wonder if the mango was supposed to sweeten the pastry, but this particular mango turned out to be rather tart. Well, I like it the way it is; a little sugar in the tea compensates nicely. And there's a scone which I thought got the texture just right--bordering on shortbread but slightly more moist. That's incredibly rare in scones which are nearly always either dense, dry and crumbly or far too moist and cakey. Not very mango-y, though.

And that's everything! A lovely meal with a good progression of dishes (completely by happenstance, actually) and serving sizes that weren't so large to leave me stuffed. I learned something about mangoes, too, including some recipe ideas which is a nice plus. And maybe if I write up enough of these sorts of things I'll get some Miami-food-blogger cred and I'll start getting some respect around here. Well, maybe not, but it was still fun. It seemed like half the other diners were taking pictures of their plates; I wonder where else this will get written up. [Note from a year later: nowhere.]

My visit to the Mango Festival

The 16th annual International Mango Festival was held this weekend at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. I went on Sunday so I could attend the 9th annual Mango Brunch which offered dishes from seven local chefs all featuring mangoes. I kind of regret not going to the taste test on Saturday, too, but I didn't realize until I got there the sheer number of different types of mangoes available. I only got to taste a few at the tasting tent and another one at the brunch. The chefs didn't specify what sorts they used in their dishes; I think that would be a good touch they could add--have the chefs come by to try different varieties and create a dish that brings out the best of one they pick. Probably too much extra trouble for everyone involved, though.

That's not to say what they had this year was bad. I was pleased with most of the dishes on offer and, as far as I could tell, a good time was had by all.


Beyond the brunch, the festival consisted of a small ring of food vendors with mango dishes. There were Caribbean, Ethiopian, French crepes along with ice cream, cupcake and smoothie vendors. I would have liked to have tried a meal at one; another reason to go on two days next year.

There were also a couple of sauce and marinade vendors. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing; after going through the tasting I always feel obliged to buy something even if I know I never end up using these things and I'm perfectly capable of making my own sauces. I'm marinating a pork chop in a tamarind molasses ginger sauce as I type. And somehow once I've bought one it's a much lower hurdle to buy a few more that I liked. You probably can't make out the labels in the picture, but those are a hot pepper sauce, a jerk sauce and a curry spice mix from Hey Mon Caribbean Cooking Magic and two hot mango sauces and a tamarind chili sauce from Chef Allen's. I can't recall why one's in a Ball canning jar and the other in a bottle. I'll go into any details when and if I ever actually use them. One of things I want to try this next CSA go-around is stir fries using non-Chinese spice profiles. These should work well for that sort of thing.

Another booth at the festival was from Schnebly Redland's Winery. They claim to be the southernmost winery in the U.S. and they make wine from carambolas, mangoes, lychees and the like completely grapelessly. For seven bucks I got to taste everything they brought (and keep the glass. I didn't have a champagne flute so that was nice). They had three sparkling wines, one sangria-esque wine and a couple dessert wines. The sparkling wines lacked real distinctiveness, I thought; they're not going to be great wines so they should at least try to bring out the unusual fruits they're made out of and go for unique. The dessert wines succeeded more at that, but they could have been fruit syrup with a shot of vodka. Of the lot, The lychee dessert wine the best as the flavors strayed into brandy territory; I liked it, but I certainly didn't thirty-five dollars worth of like it so I didn't buy any.

There was also a mango market with a large amount of four varieties (two of which were the usual supermarket mangoes) and a few of maybe a dozen more varieties. Alongside was a tasting tent with samples of three non-supermarket sorts. There was a banana mango, one I don't recall, and a champagne mango. The banana mango had an interestingly banana-esque elongated shape and color and maybe some banana in the flavor, but that could just have been suggestion. The one I don't recall apparently wasn't interesting enough to make a note of. The champagne mangoes were particularly small and had an intense not-too-sweet flavor and a smooth creamy texture. It had the flavor I'm looking for for mango ice cream, but the mango-smoothie-booth-lady happened to be stocking up nearby and she explained that mangoes with no fiber would completely fall apart during cooking so they wouldn't work. I took her advice and I shopped around when went over to the market. I settled on a Ford mango which I'm told has an interestingly complex flavor and should be firm enough to hold together during the candying process. We'll see once it's ripe.

Finally, there was a mango tree booth selling a couple of varieties specifically bred by the horticulturists at Fairchild to be suitable for Florida gardens: the Angie and the Jean Ellen. (Jean Ellen herself was at the brunch and was presented with a plaque and an armful of her namesake mangos. Most of the crowd there were Fairchild members so they knew who she was and why she deserved a fruit named after her and the outburst of applause was no doubt genuine and heartfelt. I was there as a foodie not a plantie so I just applauded politely.) I was tempted to buy a tree but a) I don't think my landlord would appreciate it and b) I don't know if I'll be living here in when it's ready to give fruit and c) one of my co-workers brought in a bunch of mangos last year and she may well do so again.

Well, that went on a bit long. I'll put the brunch stuff in a separate post.

Ice Cream Experiment #1 - nowhere to go but up

It was the start of mango season, back in mid-July, and a co-worker had brought in a big pile of mangoes. I already had cooked and brought in a few things so the mangoes were deposited outside my office and I was given instructions to do something with them.

I didn't much care for being taken for granted after only being there five months, but I can't honestly claim that that wasn't what I was going to do anyway. It was pretty tough finding an appealing recipe; There's not all that much to do with mangoes. Eventually I settled on this recipe for mango ice cream. And, since I was feeling ambitious, I figured some sesame brittle mixed in would go nicely.

I had hoped to borrow an ice cream maker, but the only one anyone had was the old fashioned sort with the ice and the salt and who wants to deal with that? Thirty bucks later I had one of my own and I was ready to go.

There were a couple of problems right off. Primarily, the ingredient "large mangoes" is rather less precise than it might be. The mangoes available here in Miami are huge and it just didn't occur to me that they meant those dinky little things you see in supermarkets up north. It didn't help that the particular mangoes I set aside for the recipe serenely sat in my kitchen for over a week neither ripening or rotting like some sort of fruit zen masters divorced from the flow of time.

The second bit of grief was the instructions for caramelizing the mango: "Cook until the caramel dissolves". What does that even mean? Caramel can't dissolve; it's already a liquid. You know, I don't think I've ever successfully caramelize a piece of fruit in my life. I read recently that the trick is cooking it until all the fruit juice released evaporates, but that sounds like a split second of goodness before you end up with a pan full of burnt ruined fruit and I can't recall another recipe that described it that way. I'll figure it out eventually I guess.

But, back to the ice cream: even without all the extra mango and the extra mix-in of the sesame brittle (which I only scorched a little), the recipe would have over filled my modestly sized ice cream machine so I ended up with ice cream churned up all over the place. It all would have been worth it if it had tasted OK, but the bland under-ripe mangoes were like a big blanket of blah smothering the other flavors. Not a great start, but that first failure inspired me to figure this whole ice cream thing out, and 10 weeks later I've got a decent handle on it.

I still think the recipe could work just fine. Next mango season I'll give it another shot.