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MANGOLICIOUS MORNINGS with FRUITY BEGINNINGS!!

“Marriages are all happy; its having breakfast together that causes all the trouble.”
Irish Proverb Mango Fruit Salad with Apricots, Melon, Cherries & basil
It’s the month of May, & MANGO, the king of fruits, rules the roost here in India. As far as the eye can see, it’s mangoes all the way. In the midst of this, Arundati @Escapades is hosting this month’s Weekend Breakfast Blogging (WBB) #22; it’s has been aptly christened ‘May Mango Madness’. As she dramatically states, “Melting moments of May have turned up the heat a notch higher…WBB, the event started by the lovely doctor at Saffron trail, stops by at Escapades this month.” With mangoes going for less than a dollar a kilo here, it is complete madness. To add to it, the Escapades lady has been on my case to send her an entry & soon. SMSing, googling, calling…I am now stressed enough to post this immediately! Oh, the pressures of modern day existence & blogging are enough to give me sleepless nights; throw in the IPL cricket matches day after day & you lose track of time!! That’s my life, but since my conscience has now got the better of me, here we go…
I am not a very elaborate breakfast sorta person. With 3 main meals in a day, breakfast is always light & quick. Once in a while, DH rues the fact that I don’t make pancakes. I had some bookmarked from Nandita’s blog @ Saffron Trail; never quite got there. I had wild thoughts pass through my head…mango nightmares; would a frozen cheesecake sound too bizarre for breakfast? Could I pass off the ‘Mango Fool‘ the daughter made for dessert on Mother’s day? Maybe I could sneak in an ice-cream & no one would say a word…hmmmm! Arundati’s persistence got the better of me & googling led me to yummies like Mango, blueberry, and ginger fruit salad, Fresh fruit platter with ginger-mango sauce, Mango parfait! Thoroughly inspired & thankful for the shove to widen my horizons, I made this fruit salad with a ginger-lime-basil dressing.
What a great beginning to the day this was…a treat for the eyes too!
These days North India is seeing an abundance of the ‘Safeda’ mango, which is juicy & absolutely delicious. Alphonsos, Safedas, Banganpalli, Neelam, Dusheri, Totapuri, Langra can be seen across local markets during the mango season. These are all local varieties & one variety eases the other out of the market as days go by.
That’s the sons’ bowlful…he had it with just mangoes & cherries, basil & dressing!
When we were young, we would visit family friends in Benares, a holy town on the banks of the river Ganges, almost every summer. Summer being prime mango season, every meal would begin or end with mango in some form. Breakfast was usually mango pureed with a small amount of milk or cream, served chilled in porridge bowls…absolutely delicious. Lunch & dinner would be wrapped up with each of us being given individual platters, knives & mangoes (which were chilled in huge tubs of ice water), & we would devour them with great excitement….with no one particularly concerned at the juices dripping or the royal mess we created.
Mangoliciously good memories!!
The onset of summer also means the appearance of fruits from the hills from the state of Jammu & Kashmir, a state often referred to as ‘Paradise on Earth’. Peaches, apricots, cherries are mesmerising our taste buds too these days, & found place next to the mangoes in our bowlfuls for breakfast! Melons too jostled for space in the bowl; I used the melon baller for them.

Luxuriating in a walnut wood bowl that my mother got from Srinagar when we visited the ‘Paradise‘ decades ago…

Now for the recipe…very simple & full of flavour.
Ingredients for the dressing
Water - 1/3 cup
Sugar - 1/3 cup
Zest & juice of 2-3 limes
Grated fresh ginger - 1-2″ piece

Method:

  • Boil the zest + water + sugar + ginger & simmer it for 3-5 minutes.
  • Take it off the heat. Add the lime juice & let it rest for 20-30 minutes for the flavours to marry!!
  • Strain & chill until ready to use.
  • Chop up 3-4 mangoes, deseed & quarter 10-15 apricots, pip the cherries (I didn’t) & ‘ball’ the melon (I did).
  • Chop up a handful of fresh basil fine. Gently toss everything together in a big bowl, drizzle the dressing over the fruit & toss again gently. Chill well & serve in individual bowls with a sprig of basil each. Top with chopped crystallized ginger if you like.

There you go Arundati…this is for you @ Escapades!! Thanks for pushing (read stalking) me to stretch my limits. A sweet thought on the side, this bowl makes for delicious dessert too, served with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream. We tried that too (obviously!!!).

Delicious, both to begin, & end the day!! Howzzat for a ‘bowlful of mangolicious options’?

Posted by Passionate baker & beyond.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Blog Event, Fruit, WBB, mango. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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