Round-up: Mangoes on our mind

In literature, myth and art, the mango is to us what the apple is to the West. Over five millennia old, this fruit is the stuff of legend and summer’s greatest bounty. Every year there are grafting experiments as over a hundred varieties of the fruit are grown on a single tree. This flavourful and fragrant fruit is also versatile enough to appear across cuisines, from sherbets to pickles and desserts to curries. This summer, restaurants are playing around with salads featuring the mango in all its forms, experimenting with classic flavours and unusual pairings.

Cheeseling Jhal Muri

This salad is a fun twist on the jhal muri, one of Kolkata’s iconic street foods. While keeping the base flavours intact, Thomas Zacharias, executive chef at The Bombay Canteen, has replaced murmura (puffed rice) with cheeselings. The flavours literally dance on the palate, as the crunchy cheeselings, soft boiled potatoes, sweet apples, spicy green chillies and pungent mustard dressing all come together. “The finely chopped raw mango adds the final sour element to the dish and this salad takes a classic street food, which is also one of my childhood favourites, as my main component and pairs it with a seasonal ingredient—mango," says Zacharias.

The Bombay Canteen (Mumbai), Rs200

Kale, Mango And Chevre Salad

This salad is a riot of colours, with bright pops of orange and green bursting on the plate. And it tastes just as good as it looks. Mango is a central ingredient, which is sweet and tart and pairs really well with the earthy spinach and slightly bitter kale. The salad promises stellar flavours and also packs in nutrition as kale and spinach are high in vitamins B and K, while mangoes are a great source of vitamin C.

Café Zoe (Mumbai), Rs380

Green Mango And Papaya Salad

Chef Prashanth Puttaswamy, executive chef, The Fatty Bao, has created his own interpretation of the classic South-East Asian staple. His green mango and papaya salad is a fun play of contrasts in texture and flavour, combining sweet and sour, soft and crunchy. In it, the chef combines shredded raw mango and papaya with a secret in-house dressing and tops it off with fresh basil, coriander, roasted cashews and finely chopped chillies.

The Fatty Bao (Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru), Rs245

Ghevar And Aam Ki Salad Chaat

Chef Tejas Sovani’s salad-chaat hybrid presents the mango with both fun and flair. He plays with different textures and forms of the mango—raw, ripe, candied and rehydrated to create this dish. The Rajasthani ghevar, soaked in buttermilk, forms the base, along with a layer of sweet curd. This is then topped with diced raw, fresh and candied mango. A drizzle of mint chutney, rehydrated green spiced mango, pomegranate seeds, fresh mint leaves and a dollop of raw mango sorbet add the finishing touches to the dish.

Amaranta, The Oberoi (Gurugram), Rs1,050

Mango Earth Salad

Mango Earth Salad

This salad at Nueva literally draws its inspiration from the cosmos. The various elements on the plate have been fashioned to resemble planets, the sun, air, water and soil. The restaurant, which specializes in South American fare, draws on Latin American traditions of sun worship. And the mango forms a central part of its salad design. “So you have a soil on the plate made from figs and prunes. The air is represented by dehydrated veggies. And the mango purée at the centre symbolizes the sun," says Michael Swamy, chef patron at Nueva.

Nueva (Delhi), Rs400