In my mind, mango and pine will always be tangled together. I have Luciano to thank for that.
Luciano was a dishwasher at the first restaurant that I worked in. He could rip through stacks of dirty dishes faster than any machine, work any station where he was needed, fix anything that was put in front of him. He also made the most delicate pasta that I've ever tasted. All this, he did with the demeanor of a pit bull, alternately growling and cursing like a sailor, then laughing and smiling like an impish boy. He held everyones respect with his consummate badassness.
He was a man of many talents and just as many peculiarities. For one, he had a habit of chewing on pine twigs, of which he kept a fresh supply in a freezer. When questioned, he explained that it kept his teeth clean and it was Nature's breath freshener. I had to agree as he did, indeed, have a dazzling-white smile and always smelled forest-fresh.
Luciano also introduced me to the mango. He brought one in for me one day when I expressed an interest in the fruit that he spoke of with an exaggerated fondness that made his eyes go soft. He showed me how to peel it with a paring knife, then cut away the flesh from the flat seed that he kept for himself, scraping it over and over between his teeth, because–as he put it–"It is the sweetest part…Nature's candy."
My first impression of the mango was favorable–a nice balance of sweet and tart, exotic aromas, buttery texture–yet there was an underlying flavor that intrigued me. When I identified it as pine and relayed this to Luciano, he burst out in a belly-laugh, explaining, "To me, everything tastes like pine"
It came as no surprise when, many years later, I confirmed that there is a concentration of the hydrocarbon, terpene, in the flavor profile of mangoes. Among these are limonene (citrus), pinene (pine), carvone (caraway, dill), myrcene (bay, verbena, myrtle), and ionone (violet, vetiver).
While playing with the flavor of pine (here, in the form of spruce) and mango, I found vanilla to be a nice bridge with both flavors, rounding out the sharp pitchyness of the pine and enhancing the floral aroma of mango. Pomelo, an enormous citrus that tastes like grapefruit without the bitterness, has a fragrant peel with tones of bergamot that played along well with these flavors.
Recently, in an email exchange with another chef, I mentioned this relationship between mango and pine. He was quick to reference a dish in The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Sure enough, Heston Blumenthal had uncovered this relationship and composed a beautiful dessert around it.
king crab
mango
spruce
pomelo
avocado
vanilla
Although Luciano was in his fifties when I knew him, he was one of the fittest people I knew. He attributed this to a daily regimen of weight lifting and mango power shakes.
I think that he would approve of this mango lassi with a head of spruce foam, scented with a split vanilla bean.
Spruce (Picea) proliferates throughout Northern temperate zones. It is distinguished by its symmetrical conical growing habit, making it a prized landscape plant as well as a favorite Christmas tree. Spruce contains a good amount of vitamin C and its sap was used by Native Americans to make a gum, which later became the inspiration for the first commercially produced chewing gum.
Addendum: an interesting bit of information from a reader via email:
"…I lived on Kauai for four years where people with property have varied and excellent cultivars of all sorts of mango trees and one of my neighbors took me to his 'special' tree to harvest a basket load of perfectly luscious golden mangos. Then he showed me his personal quirk – mangos will bleed sap from the stem when they're picked and that was one of his favorite parts. I tried it and found it to be totally piney in flavor and from then on, I really taste the terpenes in the mango's I eat quite clearly. So fun. He believed it to be particularly healing too, though he didn't have any concrete thoughts about why specifically.
I recommend looking near the stem end of the mangos you find in the market for a shiney, dried drip of sap somewhere on the skin. You can usually peel it off and chew it like gum. It will be totally piney and delicious.
Thought you'd find this a fun bit to know…"
I recommend looking near the stem end of the mangos you find in the market for a shiney, dried drip of sap somewhere on the skin. You can usually peel it off and chew it like gum. It will be totally piney and delicious.
Thought you'd find this a fun bit to know…"
Playing with Fire and Water 
Looks great! Is it pommelo gel set inside those cylinders? For the mango wrapper for the crab, did you just sheet the mango, or is that like a dehydrated mango gel of some sort?
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Yes, pomelo gel and sheets of mango.
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oh I love to see your food! where can i get those recipe? I love to handon to enjoy the fun.
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