Hi there,
Happy summer, and happy mango season to all who celebrate!
I recently came across this photo from a summer spent in Pakistan in 2010. My Dadi (paternal grandmother) is slicing mangoes for my cousin Sairah and me in their Lahore home. Even more washed mangoes are drying in a colander, waiting to be prepped and enjoyed. We’re all glistening with sweat—an indication of the sweltering summer.
This act of slicing mangoes is a perfect illustration of an unbeatable and unofficial family philosophy: Uncut fruits will sit around and never get eaten; slice them up for everyone and they’ll be devoured.
I'm always impressed by how my family members know, off the bat, so many different varieties of fruits by their unique names and by their characteristics, from texture to size to taste—this all while I barely care to make a distinction between green and red apples (though I try to be a little more observant in the fall). Like most other fruit varieties with specialized names, mangoes have long been grafted and cultivated. Grafting is a word that inevitably comes up when I talk to family about mangoes. For those who, like me, have a limited basic knowledge of this concept, it entails the insertion of a branch of a specific cultivar of fruit tree into the stalk of a generic fruit tree sapling in order to grow the desired variety. My biologist father explains that the seed that is planted only carries the generic fruit’s genetics; the specifics of the cultivated varieties are not passed down in the seed. (He also insists that I consult my evolutionary biologist/botanist father-in-law about the hard scientific facts!) Therefore, the sapling of the desired cultivar must be fashioned by hand each time.
There are dozens of varieties that make up the versatile “mangoscape” in the region: There's the sindhri, a large and sweet variety that arrives in the markets early in the season from the southern Sindh province, where it gets hot earlier. The mango we were having above with my Dadi was the anwar ratol: a sweet, juicy, and smaller June variety. Then there's the green-skinned langra (literally "one-legged"), and there are also the fajri and dasheri types. The golden yellow chaunsa is a popular variety that lasts through August. While all of these mangoes are specially cultivated, there are smaller non-grafted varieties that are simply known as "desi" or local mangoes—the products of seeds that grow relatively effortlessly from the soil.
Mango stories and family anecdotes abound. My aunt Amber recently shared that as kids she and my dad each planted a mango tree (of the langra variety) in the garden of their family home in Lahore, with hers going on to bear fruit for many decades.
My Dadi was a bonafide practical joker. There are a range of stories in the following vein: my aunt Rubina remembers how one summer she reached for her favorite anwar ratol mangoes in the fridge. She was anticipating the cold juicy flavor bomb to be mere moments away—only to have the mango she had chosen collapse in her hand. My Dadi, who was in the vicinity and had been watching her intently, doubled over with laughter. This was because earlier, she had seamlessly scooped out the contents of the mango, filled it up with with air, and sealed it—waiting for a victim to experience her mischief.
There’s also this saying I like that my aunt shared recently, one of many about mangoes in Urdu:
آم کھانے سے مقصد نہ کے گھٹلیاں گننے سے
A rough translation: The intention is to eat the mangoes, not count their leftover pits.
In other words, let’s talk about topics of substance.
I don't associate mangoes with an elegant consumption experience. At home, we would usually cut up mango slices without removing the skin: the flesh was meant to be messily chewed and sucked off of it, in our hands. The same goes for whoever went to work on the pit, gorging on the last bits of mango flesh that covered it. This is all a far cry from the uniform, neatly skinned slices packed and sold by vendors on Brooklyn Bridge or in the fresh fruit aisle at Whole Foods.
Before we moved into our house, the first viewing of the property with the realtor made a strong impression on my ten-year-old self. They'd arranged the house nicely, had some classical music floating through hidden speakers—an early Mozart symphony or something—and the light was adjusted just so.
Come in, the realtor said. The owners are in the kitchen having coffee.
It was a very formal entrance with meticulously planned banter and ambience, and as we walked down what was pointed out to us as the "center hall," we discovered that the retirement-age owners were, indeed, glamorously in between sips of what smelled like a fresh coffee brew.
A few months later when we were all moved in, we were having mangoes after dinner, digging into our summer dessert. Eating mangoes counts as the messiest meal I've ever experienced at my parents’ dining table: my parents who are, otherwise, so exacting in their presentation and etiquette around each dish, even when it was just the three of us.
I jokingly told my parents that it was a good thing we weren't about to sell the house at this very moment:
Can you imagine the real estate agent saying, "Come in...the owners are having mangoes"? And the prospective buyers having no choice but to witness this intimate episode, compelled to shake our hands covered in sticky mango juice?
When consuming mangoes, taking full advantage of the rights to “privacy in one’s home” is of utmost importance.
After talking so much about mangoes with family members recently, my mom introduced my husband and me to a favorite and storied method of enjoying smaller mangoes, particularly the kinds that are less fleshy and more fibrous. Instead of slicing the mango, which is more difficult anyway due to all the undesired fibers—stringy pieces that would also get stuck in your teeth—the technique here is to squeeze and squish the mango while rotating it until the pulp inside gets ever softer and loosened—and eventually crushed.
The tip of the mango is cut off and cleaned so that we can affix our mouths directly to the stalk end and drink the juice and bits of flesh out of it. Like many of my aunts and uncles on both sides of the family, my mom remembers this as her favorite summer dessert in Karachi: drinking from crushed mangoes after they'd been sitting on ice. Mangoes enjoyed this way are informally known as "choosney walay aam,” literally “mangoes for drinking.”
The mango we “drank” out of last week was a Mexican, not Pakistani, mango, as most mangoes in grocery stores here are usually from Mexico. However, in recent years, Pakistani mangoes have started becoming accessible in the US. Last week for the very first time, my mom procured the chaunsa variety of mango from her local Pakistani grocer, who receives special shipments and sells them to customers at a premium price.
The town over from my parents has one of the most popular ice cream places in their county, and it happens to be run by a Pakistani. Maybe it’s no surprise then that one of the best flavors and a family favorite is their—drum roll please—mango ice cream.
So it was that on the same recent visit that my husband and I squeezed and drank from a mango in the afternoon, we also continued in our mango jubilee after dinner. Not only did we indulge in the creamiest most delicious mango ice cream, but we enjoyed it with slices of Pakistani chaunsa mangoes: a mango dessert supreme.
Currently in our Brooklyn fridge, we have Mexican mangoes marked as “Romina” from Trader Joe's and yet another Pakistani variety: sindhri. My mom passed the latter along to me in a Bloomie's Little Brown Bag a few nights ago when we all met up for an evening at Carnegie Hall.
Yes: I experienced the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra perform its wonderful program of music by Khachaturian, all while having a pair of sindhri mangoes nestled snugly under my red velvet lined seat: mangoes from Pakistan meant to be consumed here in New York, over the next day or two.
Do you have any mango stories or recipes to share? I’d love to hear more.
And here's a fun read from a few years ago in Eater magazine about the WhatsApp business of importing Pakistani mangoes into the US.
Some housekeeping: This newsletter is on a bit of a relaxed summer schedule through August. (Astute newsletter readers in the biweekly rhythm will note that this post came out one week later than usual!)
Have a wonderful week, and until soon,
Insia
What a great memory a mango will always take you back to that memory thank you for sharing 🙏🏻
What wonderful memories you recreated! My most coveted mango was Anwar atol for its aromatic nectar and Langra which I always associated with the flavor of real mango