Mango Squish

I know this looks totally disgusting, and it's totally not local food, but it tastes so good, and is so much fun you really should try it. I learned this technique for eating a mango when I lived in Brazil in college on an incredible immersion program through the School for International Training. I had been studying Capoeira Angola for a few years, and wanted to go somewhere with a lot of African (specifically Yoruba) influence. Since I was convinced by a Nigerian friend that going to school in a military dictatorship wouldn't be very fun, I opted to head to Bahia, Brazil, and my life was forever changed. Now the details of this trip could go on and on, but the point of this post is simple and short: Mangoes, when ripe are an incredible, extremely wide and delicious food group. Yes I said food group because in any tropical country where mangoes grow you quickly learn that there are dozens of varieties of these fruits, each more delicious than the next and enough of them around to live off of. In Brazil, we would just hop off and bus and go pick a mango off a tree. If there was no time or place to cut it up, we would just do what the local kids did and start massaging the mango until we had fully squished up the fruit beneath the skin. Once the mango was completely soft and supple, we would bite a small hole at the top and start sucking out the delectable fruit pulp. Yes it sounds gross, but seriously, it is incredible, and certainly the least messy way you will ever eat a mango.

To do this you need a fairly ripe mango, one that is soft to the touch. Haitian or other flatter shaped mangoes with smaller sized pits work well, but go ahead and try it with any ripe mango you can find.