Day 85: Chaunsa Mangoes - The King of the Mangoes

The King of the Mangoes. I didn't come up with the name. That's just what it's called! It's also known as the "Chaunsa" mango and it is mainly cultivated in India and Pakistan. It is is in season between June and mid-August, and you can buy them right now in little India.

The sign of them read "Very Sweet" in a black marker. They cost over $2 each, and they're smaller than those massive red mangoes you get all year round. But the taste. Oh the taste. If you've ever been or lived in Southeast Asia, this is what you're used to. Sweet flavour, cold slippery texture, not fibrous at all, and pumped full of mangoey (is that even a word?) flavour.

In the Philippines, the most common mango is the ataulfo mango, aka Manila mango, and they are actually grown in Mexico, so we can get them here in Canada when they are in season (April - October). And they're probably not as good here in Canada as they are if you get them fresh in the Philippines or Mexico, but they're pretty damn awesome. Right now in Little India, you can get them for 50 cents each, so about 75% less than the Chaunsa mango.

But more common in your average grocery store is the Tommy Atkins mango, which aren't very sweet and the flesh is harder, drier, and more fibrous, but definitely passable given our options in Canada. But they ship well, have long shelf lives, and don't bruise as easily. Apparenlty 80% of mangoes in the UK and US are these. For some reason, I always call these "Mexican Mangoes", to distinguish them from "Filipino Mangoes" although I can't find any reference to this name on internet so I don't know if I made up that name or I saw it somewhere.

Ataulfo mango vs. Tommy Atkins

Why are they Chaunsa mangoes so expensive vs. Ataulfo or Tommy Atkins? If you are conscious of carbon footprint, cover your ears. The short answer is that I bet that they are air freighted in, and that adds a few bucks per pound. But why are these air freighted in? I'm about to launch into a bit of an economics speculation, so you can skip this section below, but absolutely economics matters in food. Keep in mind that one of secrets to any fruit is the ripening process. As you may know, a fruit which is ripened on the tree or vine, will always have more natural and delicious sugars. Easy for a grocer in the Philippines to access these fruits because the grower is a few miles away, but here in frosty Canada - how do you get these tree ripened fruits? Put yourself in the position of the grocer. First, you can get them from a Canadian hot house, think about tomatoes, so you can get them vine ripened even in the winter. Yum. Alternatively, you can find a distributor who brings them in from Latin America, so typically they have to be picked a few weeks before they're ripened and allowed to ripen on the container over where a distributor would ship them to you. These typically won't taste nearly as good and sometimes the transportation process bruises the fruit and it gets sensitive to shelf life. There's always the option of preserved vegetables, and if you think about it, part of the great expansion in Dutch trade in the 17th century was because of the invention of a process of preserving fish and specialized ships that allowed this to happen (called "gibbing" if you're ever interested). So preservation is an option. But there is a change in flavour. Finally, you could air freight them in. Air freight comes over in 24-48 hours I believe, so they can be tree ripened in Pakistan, and at your grocery counter 24 hours later. But air freight is much more costly than shipping by container because of the packages are harder to handle (vs. shipping containers which can be picked right off a boat and directly loaded onto a truck), the fuel cost of lifting an aircraft thousands of feet above ground, and you don't get scale because you're not bringing in thousands of grocery stores worth. It might be just for you and three other stores. And air freight can be shipped right to your grocery store or a storage place near the airport, so there's all those costs of getting to the airport, picking up a small amount, and then bringing them to your doorstep within a few hours. It could be handled by a distributor, or who knows, each of them could do it on their own, and the grocery store owner could drive to the airport on the way onto work, whatever, the point is that air freight adds a few extra bucks per pound (hence $2 per mango). This is neither here nor there. Sometimes it's the only alternative for getting amazing tasting mangoes in Canada.

Day 84: Mussels

A mussel dipped in a bit of butter. Sprinkled with a smoky hot sauce. Some crusty bread on the side. Awesome. What I love most, though, is sipping on wine while eating mussels, because you get that oceany flavour that comes right through.

It's June. So what? When is a good season for mussels? That's a hard question to answer. The received wisdom is that you should eat them in the months with the letter "R" in them (i.e. September - April), but I think that they are good all year round. I don't know how scientific the "R" month strategy is, but one reason is that the mussels spawn in the summer, so the meat is a little bit smaller. Sometimes you'll get  a batch and they are really thin, and that's because they just released all of their "goods". The other reason is safety, because if you're not dealing with a good fisherman, sure,  the water is a bit warmer and so bacteria can grow if they aren't stored and handled properly.

The mussels here were from St. Lawrence Market, and they cost $2.99/lb. Typically, I can eat 1 lb myself for an appetizer, or it's a side dish, half a pound per adult is okay.

The quickest way to cook them at home is just to fry up some onions, garlic, carrot, celery, until soft, then add the mussels and some liquid (e.g. broth, white wine, water, clamato) and cook until the mussels open which is anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes. Save those juices at the bottom of the pan, I call that the nectar, and just add parsley into it at the end and pour it all on top of the mussels.

Throw out the mussels that don't open, because they're dead and you have no idea how long they've been dead.  In the photo above, I made a tomato stew (canned tomatoes, clam juice, onions, garlic, oregano), and then added the mussels at the last minute and I ate it with baguette cut into triangular pieces - that way you get lots of soft surface area to soak up the liquids with. I've heard that you shouldn't serve them to kids under 5.

Sometimes you need to debeard them, but I've found that in Toronto, they generally take out the beards for you. Mussels with beards in seem to be able to be stored alive for longer.

On Mussels (facts come from Wikipedia)
Mussel is the common name used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca. Most of us are used to seeing the "blue mussel" here in North America. This is interesting - 80% of cultured mussels are produced in Prince Edward Island. When I was in Vancouver, though, I noticed that there was a lot of mussels from Washington states, in fact an estimated 2.9M pounds of mussels were harvested in 2010 valuing roughly $4.3M.

Mussels can be smoked, boiled, steamed, roasted, barbecued or fried in butter or vegetable oil. You can get smoked canned mussels at most grocery stores, in the same area as canned tuna, and you can put them right on crackers.

In Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, mussels are often consumed with french fries ("moules-frites") or bread.

As opposed to the Blue Mussel, New Zealand green lipped mussels can be found in restaurant here in Canada but almost always in their previously frozen form and on the half shell. Why would someone use a frozen mussel? My guess is that they are safer to handle than live mussels, especially if you're not selling a whole lot of them in your restaurant.  The meat is quite large, but chewier, because they were previously frozen.

Mussels are a high protein food source. Their low fat content makes them potentially healthier than other protein sources, such as beef, which can contain a lot of saturated fat. Mussels are also low in calories. Mussels are also an excellent source of vitamin B12 and selenium - Vitamin B12 is important in the functioning of metabolism processes and a deficiency can cause fatigue and depression, as well as other symptoms. Mussels are also good sources of other B vitamins (particularly folate), phosphorus, manganese and zinc. Mussels are a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids and are considered an excellent seafood choice.