My nephew and his boyfriend brought us some delicious mangoes from their trip to Key West, a gift for taking care of their sweet, sweet dog, Cooper. After devouring two just on their own, I used another one for this great fruit salad since blueberries are also in season. This is sort of a non-recipe recipe, so amounts are approximate. The grated fresh ginger adds a wonderful element to this dish, and worth the trip to the store if you don't have any on hand. (I keep a knob or two of fresh ginger in the freezer and grate it frozen for occasions like these.) If you don't have a nephew who brings you gifts of mangoes, then you could use peaches (also in season!). The best place hands down to get peaches in this area is
McConnell's Farm. Check out the link!
Mango & Blueberry Fruit Salad
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 mango, cut into cubes (scroll down for a mango cutting lesson)
about 1 cup of fresh blueberries
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk the lime juice, honey and ginger to blend. Add the mango cubes and blueberries and toss to distribute the honey/juice mixture. Can be refrigerated for a few hours--and truth be told, this was still very good the day after it was made. Some chopped fresh mint would also be nice, but the taste of mangoes, blueberry and ginger doesn't need any embellishment. Makes--oh, about two cups or so of salad--enough, certainly, for four as a side dish.
Mango cutting lesson:
Before I learned how to cut a mango, I wound up mangling a few into a pulp. Here's how I avoid that now! Mangoes have a large pit in their center that the fruit meat tends to cling to. The trick to getting around the pit is to lay the mango on a cutting board with the flat side down. Estimating where the pit is--about a third of the way into the center from the edge or so, slice off one side of the mango, like this:
Do the same with the other side. Then, using your knife, score the flesh lengthwise and across (see photo below) being a bit careful not to cut entirely through the skin (though it's not a big deal if you do).
Using your thumb and fingers, push on the mango skin to turn it sort of inside out, so that the scored flesh stands up, like this:
You can then easily (well...) slice the cubes off the skin and into a bowl. Trim the skin off of the fruit that remains around the pit and score and cut into cubes around the pit as best you can. Voila! An un-mangled mango!
