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meet the mango

The season for mangoes is approaching, so read up on Rob Arnhem's research and make your plans

The mango season will soon be upon us, and an informed and adventurous person should get to know what’s on the menu. Ever heard of Malgova, Gudapapa, Rajapuri, Carabao? No? Then what about Kent and Haden, and Julie and Alphonso? Are Chakkaragund and Banganapalli more than a mouthful for you? Tried the Tong Dum, or ‘black gold’ mango from Thailand? What about the KO 11? It’s a knock out. Gird you loins for the avalanche of rich fruit about to begin its descent on us.

The mango, called amba in Arabic, came to Oman from India, among the things that the medieval kings of Oman, the Nabahanis, are said to be remembered for. In Oman, the mangoes are small but flavoursome, and most trees are found along the Batinah. The Persians are said to have introduced them to East Africa about a thousand years ago. Arab and Indian navigators took the mango wherever they went. Buddhist monks from India are believed to have planted the fruit on their South East Asian missions as they spread their belief. A garland of mango leaves is often seen over the doorways of Indian homes. The name ‘mango’ and its various forms in other languages derive from the Tamil mankay, via Malay and Portuguese. The Portuguese were largely to thank for first taking the fruit outside the Indian Ocean area, to West Africa and Brazil, and their rivals the Spanish followed suit and introduced them to the Caribbean Islands, Mexico and the Philippines. As other colonial powers like the Dutch, the French and the English homed in, so the fruit’s popularity spread. Today, you can spin the globe and find mangoes growing in almost any tropical or sub-tropical country. As you might expect, India produces two thirds of the world’s crop, with Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Brazil next, and perhaps, surprisingly, the next four competitors being the Philippines, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic and Colombia. The United States (mainly Florida), South Africa, Australia and Egypt are also in the running as commercial producers.

The end of May sees the launch of the annual Mango Festival here, but already some early ripening cultivars from South Africa are attracting buyers. Their glossy deep maroon and green have been adding colour to fruit stalls for some time now. The hottest months of the year in the Indian subcontinent, its original home, mark the undisputed reign of this mouth-watering fruit. The ripening fruit needs a hot dry period to reach its full glory, and this is provided by the build up to the monsoon. The trees are flowering right now in Oman. They like four wet months and then a hot dry season for flowering and fruiting. They don’t like frost at all, and therefore grow best at lower altitudes. They can grow from seed, but grafting is much faster.

Mangoes come in huge variety, from a tiny 25 gram sweetie to a whopping 2.5 kilogram delicious monster. The Alphonso seems to rule the roost as the undisputed king of mangoes. Mangoes come round, oval or rather kidney-shaped, and the waxy skin blazes in a spectrum of green, yellow, orange, red and almost purple. The flesh can range from a succulent pale yellow to a deep rich orange. It can be fibrous, and many would claim that these have the best flavour, but most today for sale to the West especially have had the fibres bred out of them. The pulp can be sweet to tart, and there is often a whiff of something like turpentine to some traditional types.

The mango is low in fat and rich in vitamins: carotene (vitamin A), thiamine, niacin, riboflavin and Vitamin C, and contains trace elements including iron, phosphorus and calcium. Before arriving on Western tables, a complex process of traditional and modern technology operates. They are picked unripe, washed, gently packed in rice straw, freighted, dipped in hot water or subjected to ethylene gas to ripen them, sometimes gamma-rayed to delay ripening, and then waxed, sprayed and polished to look good on homogenised supermarket shelves. But the best mango is one that arrives without the expensive high-tech gift-wrapping, and the fresh produce market in Mawaleh or the street stalls spread under the trees like the one outside the Al Araimi Centre offer more local colour and flavour.

Mangifera indica is a rather prosaic name for such an extraordinary plant. It simply tells it like it is – ‘Indian mango bearer’ – but simple names bely the story behind the mango. With the date, olive, fig and pomegranate, it is one of the oldest cultivated fruits in the world, with a pedigree of between 6,000 and 4,000 years of human nurture and selection. Experts will draw swords over the exact number of types, but there are over 500 named varieties, at least 82 of which are grown in South India alone. By one of nature’s unexpected quirks, this luscious fruit comes from a family of trees better known for their poisonous properties: the Anacardiaceae.

The mango tree is evergreen and a very popular choice as a yard tree in hot countries, providing generous shade and fruit and much more besides. It can reach 10-30m in height, has a deep root system and is good at water conservation. Some venerable trees have been bearing fruit for three centuries. The record for the most fruit borne by one tree is an astounding 29,000. No wonder it is almost worshiped in some countries. The flowers are borne in an upright cluster consisting of up to 3,000 tiny flowers. A quarter to almost 98 per cent of these are male, the rest hermaphroditic, another feature ensuring a bountiful crop, as the flowers can very easily fertilise each other. Some trees can bear an astounding three crops a year, although most take a rest, bearing alternate years or on one side of the tree only. All sorts of folk measures are taken to ensure a good harvest: the tree can be artificially stressed by smoking, slashing the bark, even salting the ground and denying water and fertiliser to shock the tree into concentrating on producing fruit rather than growing! Sometimes they are even hand-pollinated, because although some insects and bats help the process, bees are not especially fond of the flowers. One clever new technique is to cover the flowers with a plastic bag and pop in a few house flies to do the job!

Unripe seedling mangoes make chutney and mango pickle, or atjar. The fresh fibreless ripe fruit is best eaten by slicing off a ‘cheek’ from each side, and spooning it out, or by scoring the flesh vertically and horizontally into little squares and turning the skin inside out. It can be pulped and makes a delicious refreshing drink, mixed with milk or other fruit like orange and banana, or just as it is. Dried, or pulped and rolled out, it makes a great lightweight snack. You can freeze them whole or peeled, sliced and packed in sugar. Covered in lime juice and refrigerated or quick-frozen, mangoes can also be kept for later use on ice cream. Woodlands Restaurant serves Chettinad Chicken, a mouth-watering dish from Tamil Nadu, which features slices of ripe mango. But the best summer snack of all is a slightly chilled fresh mango, firm and just beginning to soften and blush. Here in Oman we will soon be spoiled for choice.

A word of warning, though. Mangoes should be washed and contact with the gummy sap from the stalk avoided. The sap from the tree is a potent skin irritant and can have a delayed reaction. Use one knife to peel the fruit and another to slice it. The pollen can also be irritating. Even mango wood should never be used for cooking, as the smoke is also an irritant. Yet the wood is very good once turned into charcoal, and it’s used in boatbuilding and for dozens of domestic purposes from rafters to tool handles. The bark contains tannin and dyes leather yellow or pink. The kernel contains an edible oil, East Asians eat the young leaves with relish, and the active astringent agent mangiferine present in the resin, leaves and bark is exploited in many folk cures from diarrhoea and bladder infections to scabies, worms and fevers. If you ever wondered how Indian miniature painters achieved that rich deep yellow pigment, stop. It was produced from the urine of cows fed on mango leaves. The practice has since been banned, as the cow paid the price in the end.

One of my earliest memories is of being put naked into the bath with a slippery peeled mango to attack and subdue. My mother, being a very practical woman who did her own washing, saw no reason to increase her workload. Even the pip provided hours of entertainment. Sucked white, you could tease out the fibre and draw a face on the dried stone. You cut off one end and stuck your finger in it and made your own puppet. Mangoes are wonderfully messy fruit to eat, and afficionados in India insist that they should be eaten and enjoyed with the hands. Some favourite cultivars are so soft that you can squeeze the pulp directly into your mouth! The juice stains, so take care. But enjoy yourself – eating a mango is among the world’s great sensual experiences.