How to Choose, Peel and Slice Mangoes

I love mangoes. LOVE them. Their unique, rich, tropical taste is pretty much awesome, all the time.

Living in a small town like Owensboro can make purchasing of unusual fruits and vegetables a challenge. However, Owensboro grocery stores usually do have mangoes in stock. These are almost always the red/green skinned variety, very rarely do I see the yellow skinned type, which are by far superior when it comes to taste and sweetness. If you like mangoes, and you ever see the yellow ones, make sure to pick them up!! You'll be in for a real treat.

Mangoes are an exotic fruit around here, many people I meet in Owensboro have never even tried them before! (Poor souls.) If they have had them, they gave them either an 'eh, it was all right,' vote or a 'yuck!'. This is probably because A) they don't know how to pick good mangoes, and then B) don't know how to peel, slice and eat them. Don't have a bad mango experience! Here is my guide to make the most out of your local grocers mango selection!

Choosing mangoes:

1) Never eat a firm mango. They should be soft, with a slight wrinkling of the skin. This is when you know that the sweetness is at its highest. When the skin is removed, the flesh will be a vibrant orange and smell heavenly. The firm kind will be sour and crunchy, the flesh a white/light yellow color, the smell very slight if any scent at all. I always dig through the mangoes at the grocers, feeling for softness. If all my Krogers has is firm fruit, then I either don't buy, or I buy and then leave it out on the counter, waiting for softness. A mango doesn't always ripen properly on the counter, however, which is why I don't always buy if they are firm.

Slicing and Peeling Mangoes:

Never eat mango skin, it's bitter. There are two ways to peel and serve a mango that I know of:

1) I own a mango peeler, which makes this job very easy for me. Basically, it's a giant potato peeler, about three times the length. I bought it from importfoods.com for $11. Kinda pricey, I know, but I really like manoges, okay?

Here is what my mango looks like, after peeling. Use a knife to cut off the stem part.

2) If you don't have a fancy-pants mango peeler, like most normal people, then simply leave the skin on while cutting. Then, when sliced off, run a knife just under the skin to remove it. You will probably lose some flesh this way. Another option is to simply peel the skin off, like a banana. This method only works if the mango is ripe enough, and can be messy. If you want to make a presentation of your mango, don't use the peeling method, it will mangle it. If you just want to eat it however, go on ahead. It's easy!

When you hold a mango in your hand, you'll notice that it's flatter on two of its sides. This asymmetrical shape is caused by the seed inside, which is really hard and cannot be cut through, and makes slicing mangoes a pain if you don't know what your doing! 

To make this easier, set your mango on the cutting board, narrow ends top and bottom. Then take your knife, making sure it's plenty sharp. Start slightly to the side of the top, slice down, and slide the knife along the seed. Should be very smooth and easy, if your mango is properly ripe. Once done, switch to the other side and do the same. This leaves some flesh still attached to the seed at the narrow ends. Take the knife and slide it along the seed at both ends, removing the remainder. (There will still be some flesh on the seed. I take this and chew on it like a hamster. No pictures available of chewed seed). Should look like this when done:

Now simply slice it up into smaller pieces, and enjoy!

Thai Curried Sweet Potato Soup

After the near heart attack that I gave John and myself from the macque choux, I have decided to make something a bit healthier.

Thai is one of my favorite varieties of food. Needless to say, living in a small town means that there are no Thai restaurants near to us, and there are very few ingredients available to make Thai dishes. Owensboro's grocery store does carry some of them, however! Ideally, I would want to use a red curry paste to make this. (Someday I will try making from-scratch curry paste!) When I first moved here, the local Kroger didn't carry the paste type, but did have red curry in a powder form. Using the powder turned out really well, and it is what I use to make this recipe every time, even though there is a paste variety available today.

This recipe is not an invention of mine, and unfortunately I cannot remember where I found it (I think cooks.com, but I couldn't find it when I searched), but when I did, I knew that this was a perfect healthy, small town friendly option for me. This vegetarian soup is similar to the classic Thai dish, Thom Kha Gai, or Chicken Coconut Milk Soup. It uses almost none of the actual Thai ingredients, such as kaffir lime leaves, galangal and lemon grass (not available locally and definitely not available locally. Lemon grass IS actually available now, yay!) But like the real version, it is made creamy through the addition of coconut milk, which also gives it a wonderful tropical taste.

Sweet Potatoes are a healthy option in any dish, full of fiber and containing plenty of vitamins B, C and D. They are one of my favorite vegetables (there are few vegetable I don't enjoy), and can be very versatile. Originally when I viewed the recipe I had imagined a blended sweet potato soup, without visible chunks of potato - but let's be honest here, using the blender creates nothing but more mess to clean up. (My least favorite part of the cooking experience - afterwards!) Leaving the sweet potato in chuck form will look a bit odd, but it is actually more authentic to real Thai dishes.

A good Thai inspired dish, like this one, should touch upon four of our taste bud senses: sweet, savory, spicy and sour. Combining all of these together is a part of what makes Thai food so unique and exotic to our western-cooking adapted taste buds. Typical American cooking usually has at most two of these senses, rarely three. (Think of Chile con Carne, for example. Lots of flavors and spices, right? Well, no, not when you give it the flavor sense test: there's just two, savory and spicy. Some chile recipes add enough sugar to give it a sweet taste, too, bringing the potential total up to three. I wonder what a Four-Senses Chile con Carne would be like?) This recipe hits all four senses - curry for the spicy, broth for the savory, coconut milk for the sweet, and lemon juice for the sour. (One of my four senses above is not actually a part of the traditional 'taste bud senses'. Do you know what the fourth one really is?)

Since we are aiming for healthy, I pair this with brown rice. Make your rice sticky by adding extra water. I use what I call my 'Rule of Thumb' for sticky brown rice - literally stick your thumb into the rice cooker bowl as you fill it up, keeping the tip of the digit right at the rice, not down into it. When the water reaches the joint in your thumb, you've got enough! Also, brown rice should ideally be allowed to soak for about a half-an-hour before cooking. An alternative is to mix in a bit of white rice, to make it seem softer. If making just white rice, place your pinky into the bowl when filling. When the water reaches the first pinky joint, stop. (Using the thumb will result in rice pudding.) Thanks to this method, I never use measuring cups, and it works perfectly, every time.

Macque Choux

*4/24/2013*  I'm updating the pictures for this delicious recipe. Corn on the cob is appearing in stores, and so these pictures show that process. I added shrimp, chicken and crab meat to this batch. Awesome.

My blog isn't pretty yet (somebody, help me!), but I wanted to go on ahead and get right into the good stuff. Cooking and recipes!

I know my first entry was all about 'exotic' cooking, ala Indian and so on, but I've had a request from John, boyfriend most wonderful, for a Louisiana recipe called Macque Choux. (Pronounced 'mock shoe', for those of whom have no background in French pronunciation, like moi. Of course, finding it the first time actually proved to be a bit of a challenge, due to the Kentucky accent, which sounds like 'mack shoe').

Before moving to Kentucky, my experience with Cajun and Creole was Aunt Judy's Christmas gumbo. Turns out there is decent sized Louisiana expat population in Kentucky, and as a result, there are a decent number cajun restaurants here. My first experience with this recipe in particular was at a Cajun restaurant in Lexington, KY, called Gumbo Ya Ya's. I've always been one to try new things, especially spicy things, and Gumbo Ya Ya's changed my outlook on Louisiana style food forever. And ever. And ever, if you know what I mean.

Of course, the 'here' in that last paragraph doesn't translate to 'here in Owensboro'. Lexington and Gumbo Ya Ya's are a good three hour drive away from us, making frequent visits a no-go. The nearest Cajun restaurant is in Evansville, about 45 miles north in Indiana, and there is no macque choux on the menu there. Tragedy! My resolution to this problem? Make it myself, of course! No recipe is too difficult for this little cook! Bring it on!

The base of this recipe I pulled from here, http://www.closetcooking.com/2011/09/maque-choux.html, at Kevin Lynch's absolutely awesome and beautiful blog, Closet Cooking. Traditional macque choux comes from southern Louisiana, and is served as a side-dish. It is a creamy combination of corn, tomatoes, onions, celery and bell peppers. (The last three are the so called 'Holy Trinity' of Cajun cooking.) The macque choux at Gumbo Ya Ya's was a bit different, however. They had turned it into a full blown main course, with a texture that was not only rich and creamy, but also cheesy!

When John told me he was practically dieing for macque choux, I knew he didn't mean the traditional, simple appetizer version. It had to be Gumbo Ya Ya style or death! Of course, Ya Ya's doesn't have their recipe conveniently posted for me, so I had to reverse engineer it.

The best way to make this recipe is with fresh, in season corn on the cob, something we usually see plenty of in Kentucky. For some reason, today my local grocery store didn't have it in stock, despite it being the middle of July and sweet corn season. I've found it down here even in the winter before, no idea why it's not here today. Frustrating! (Didn't they know I was going to do my first blog entry today, and needed to impress? Ah, small town living!)

One thing I had never encountered before with macque choux is that to get the correct consistency, you need to create 'corn milk'. To make this, you stand your corn on the cob up-right, and then carefully slice the kernels off, but only half to two-thirds of the way through. You then scrape the back of the knife to remove the remainder of the kernels. Since I don't have corn on the cob, I opted instead for frozen sweet corn, off-cob. I set aside about a 1/3 cup of this frozen corn, allowed it to thaw, and placed it in the blender to liquify. Not quite the same, but pretty dang close!

Yaya's placed crawfish in their version. Crawfish is either a) not to be found in these here parts, or b) frozen, and therefore pretty much the fishiest thing I've ever tasted (bleck). I have substituted shrimp instead, which is a better choice anyway, in my opinion. The cheese at Yaya's was a familiar looking yellow in color, which I guessed to be Velveeta. Nothing makes your taste buds say 'holy cow, delicious' like Velveeta mixed with bacon, so I added crumbled up bacon bits. There are many other types of meat that could potentially be placed in macque choux, such as andoille sausage (for those lucky folks you have it available), proscuitto, or ham. Just remember that, whatever you use, nothing brings out the flavor better in something sweet and cheesy than salty meats.

Exotic Cooking in Small City

I moved to a small town in central Kentucky almost 5 years ago, from Omaha, Nebraska. Now, Omaha may not be the biggest city ever, but at near 1 million people, it was a heck of a lot bigger than little Owensboro, at 50,000 souls! One of the things I miss most about the big city turned out to be the food: not only do big cities have so many more restaurant options, but the grocery stores also have more variety. This can make variety dining hard (Red Lobster and Olive Garden get so old), but simply making these foods is a challenge, too.

So, to solve this dilemma of mine, I turned to learning how to make the foods that I miss myself. Whether it be Indian, Thai or Vietnamese, to German, French and Italian food, if I want to eat it again without having to drive an hour away, then I need to figure out how to put it together! That doesn't mean I intend on limiting myself to foreign cuisine. As a girl from the Great Plains, southern cooking can be just as exotic as the most difficult Punjabi dish!  This blog is both a personal documentation of my cooking adventures, but also an effort to show others who are in the same situation I am on how to make the food I crave, or have always wanted to try, without having to take a weekend trip just to get it.