The freshest mango juice ever!

Forget your pressed, hand squeezed and fancy pants bottled juices... the only way to have mango juice is straight from the skin.

As part of my search for mango varieties I have not tasted, my fruit guy recently started selling these tiny baby mangoes and I just had to try them.

Fitting into the palm of my hand, I thought that the stone would be in proportion to its size, but it was mostly stone, making it impossible to trim any flesh away to eat. I later learnt that there are clingstone and freestone varieties, but this left me none the wiser as to how to eat it. Baffled at how to get at this baby fruit, I left the rest in the fridge, until I was told at an Indian friend’s birthday party last night about the best mango and how to eat it like a local...

This tiny specimen is a fresh mango drink... pure mango juice which you extract by massaging the mango to turn the flesh into juice. Cover your clothes and pull the stalk from the top, then suck. It’s the most fun, messy and truly Indian way to eat a mango... and its cardamom scented flesh puts it on a par with my favourite Alphonso.

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Gluten free guide to Indian food – Part 1

I knew that Indian food was perfect for those living gluten free since the cuisine is largely based on rice, lentils and milk. During my time working for the supermarkets I learnt a lot about real Indian food from one of our suppliers, who showed how wheat is mostly used for breads and not in main dishes and sauces. So, being so spoilt for choice, the whole time I have been living in India, I have behaved like a child in a sweet shop, not knowing which thing to dive into first.

With no work to tie me down, my purpose here has been to learn about the nation’s cuisine. I have explored many areas of Indian food, trying dosa and idli from the south, delving into the Bengali sweet shops for laddu and burfi, sampling the Mogal treasures from the Northern territories, each time finding more and more things I can safely eat. And it hasn’t stopped either. Just the other day, I saw on the menu of one of our favourite restaurants, uttapams, vada and appams which are also naturally gluten free. India is literally food heaven for people with Coeliac Disease!

In the UK, I think we have a surprisingly limited exposure to the variety of Indian food that exists. This country is bigger than the whole of Europe and to think that lamb rogan josh, chicken korma and naan is all they have to offer sells the cuisine a little short in my opinion. There are so many things that I am still discovering and learning about, so here is a little guide to real Indian, and of course gluten free food for you:

Idli – I first experienced these when our maid proudly brought the plump little rice patties, with coconut chutney and sambar for us to taste. She comes from Chennai in the South of India and these are a traditional Tamil breakfast – a fiery one for sure. The patties are made from fermented rice, formed into flattened mounds, steamed and served with fresh coconut chutney which has been tempered with mustard seeds and curry leaves. A little bowl of spicy lentil broth to wash it all down with makes for the most satisfying and spicy breakfast I have ever had.

Dosa – Jacks most favourite thing in the world (along with channa pindi, dal and rice, and to be honest Indian food in general). These savoury pancakes made from fermented rice and black (urad) lentils are cooked on a cast iron griddle to a golden crisp on one side only. These more-ish south Indian pancakes also come with fresh coconut chutney and sambar, but can be filled with a light potato curry (masala dosa), cooked in butter, or sprinkled with grated coconut. Avoid the rava versions which contain wheat based semolina if you are gluten free. Oh and the best bit is, you eat them with your hands, which gets pretty messy, but means you have to lick your fingers afterwards.Shame!

Dal – There is a huge range of dal (lentils) dishes to try including makhani dal – a rich dish of small black lentils cooked on a slow burning fire overnight with cream and butter; tarka dal – an everyday yellow arhar dal, tempered with garlic, ginger, cumin and other spices according to the chef; Masoor dal – a washed pink dal which doesn’t need pressure cooking and is tempered with onion, aniseed and other spices; channa dal – made with split chickpeas which are a harder lentil with a distinctive taste and tempered again with spices. All of these are gluten free, as the cooked lentil naturally thickens the sauce. I make mine in bulk when I make paneer using the whey to cook the dal in, and then eat it over a couple of days, the flavour improving as it ages.

Paneer – A light and simple to make cottage cheese is a great protein if you are vegetarian and essential for Indian cooking. Homemade paneer if far superior to shop bought (not that I even know where to buy it in London) with a creamy flavour when made from whole milk and yoghurt. I can’t wait to try it out with unpasteurised milk from my farmers market when I get back... It’s a versatile gluten free base that can be used to make paneer korma, paneer tikka, or my favourite butter paneer, and I have even used it diced up in omelettes.

Appams – These dense, aerated thick pancakes are another south Indian creation that I happened upon during Jacks birthday dinner at Spice Route. Traversing the route that traders took with their precious ingredients, the menu samples Keralan coastal cuisine via Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia and across to Vietnam. It was a Keralan Irachi Stew made from lamb that came accompanied with the appams to mop up the intense meaty juices – something I miss doing greatly, especially with a poached egg. They are made from pounded and fermented rice and cooked in a kadhi or wok.

So these are just a small handful gluten free goodies I have enjoyed sampling during my time in India... more about sweets, restaurants and some northern specialities to come. I could go on for weeks I think, as India really is gluten free heaven. You just have to come and taste it for yourself...

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How many mango varieties are there?

I have been eating mangoes every day since I landed in Delhi five months ago. Surprisingly, I am not bored of them yet, despite eating them the same way every day – cut into chunks and served with other seasonal fruits such as lychee, watermelon, papaya and musk melons - for breakfast.

I know that I should get a little more creative and add them to firni (Indian rice pud) or make ice cream, but I have only ventured as far as a homemade sweet mango lassi. To be honest, I prefer their silky, sweet flesh in its purest form. Plus living in this Indian summer heat, I am avoiding the kitchen at all costs. Thankfully, there are other ways to get a mango fix in this city, as mango burfi (an Indian milk sweet) from my favourite Haldirams in Old Delhi, mango ice cream from our local Big Chill, and mango smoothie in my regular coffee shop. I never miss a chance to have mango.

Also preventing any kind of mango overload is the vast range in variety of this indigenous fruit. On passing any fruit stall or shop in the city, I scour the goods for a mango whose sweet flesh I have not yet savoured. The variety has been incredible – I certainly had no idea there were so many - from fat large yellow skinned, to medium mottled green fruits, and tiny, cardamom scented ones so small that they are mostly stone. Unfortunately, my Hindi has not progressed much and I still know none of their names.

But what I do have are photos of a few of the varieties I have tasted, with incredible and yet somewhat indescribable differences in taste, texture and juiciness. As Madhur Jafrey in her book A Taste of India says “I often think summers in India would be unbearable without the God-given compensation of mangoes, Alphonsoes in particular ”. I agree.

One of my early blog posts about Indian food recalled my first taste of Indian mangoes and back then I thought I had tasted Alphonso that looked similar to those found in UK supermarkets. But, how wrong could I have been? The difference between what I was eating then, compared to my box of true Alphonso mangoes direct from Maharashtra on the West coast of India... well they were incomparable.

This humble box of Alphonso mangoes or apus as they are known across India, was actually a very expensive gift from Jack. Visiting Mumbai and Pune for work, the team took a long detour via the wholesale fruit market with the sole purpose of purchasing the “King of mangoes” to bring home to Delhi. Some thought it was a strange gift to receive, and Jack too was a little unsure if they would really be worth the money (they are the most prized and therefore expensive type). But me being me, I was totally thrilled.

Quickly I prepared the ripest beauty, with juice trickling down my arm and the flesh slicing off the stone with ease. The fragrance just on piercing the skin made me salivate, something our local varieties had yet to do.

The ripest one in the box

A taste test was in order to see just how good these babies were compared to what we had tried so far, so I chopped up one of the regulars too. Just looking at the fruit (and apologies for the lack of photos) the Alphonso flesh was a deeper, darker, more orange colour with a firmness that meant it was easily cut into chunks. On eating... well there was truly no contest. The flesh had a meaty bite, but was the juiciest I’d ever eaten, with pure mango nectar dribbling down my chin. The flavour was strong but not overpoweringly fragrant as some varieties have been, and sweet but not sickly. All in all, it was perfect and worth every Rupee.

We had a week to eat a dozen mangoes before we left for a holiday in Goa, which meant we had two for breakfast every day. Getting better as the week progressed, I found they got sweeter and juicier and I was sad when we ate the last one, licking the plate for the remaining drips of juice.

But what I didn’t know was what the local fruit guys had in store for me. Even more varieties coming into season... there were even more treats to come.

Oh, and to answer the title of this post... how many varieties are there? Thousands apparently, with new cultivars being developed all the time. So I have a lot of tasting before the season is out.

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Alphonso Mangos