Small Bites #4: Lustful Mangoes and Sweet Peaches + Harissa Paste + Secret Beef Room
Small Bites #4: Lustful Mangoes and Sweet Peaches + Harissa Paste + Secret Beef Room
Issue No. 86
Twice a month, Sunshine + Microbes sends out our full newsletter. During the weeks in between, we share threads, interviews, kitchen tips, and a grab bag of our favorite things from the world of food and environment. Enjoy these Small Bites!
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Things We Like...
1️⃣ Uncommonly Exquisite Fruit 🍑
There are clandestine operations in various outposts throughout the United States, where if you know the right contacts and are willing to pay a steep price, you might obtain a luscious treasure. I’m talking about Pakistani mangoes, which I read about in a recent longform article in Eater headlined “Inside the Secretive, Semi-Illicit, High Stakes World of WhatsApp Mango Importing.”
For all types of logistical reasons, these mangoes are a real challenge to import to the U.S. The process is expensive and full of paperwork and on top of all that, these magical mangoes have a short shelf-life. But those who know the taste will pay big bucks to the few importers here or even sneak them through less-regulated Canada. For them, Pakistani mangoes are like manna from heaven. For Eater, Ahmed Ali Akbar wrote:
But, as I learned after I tasted the mangoes I’d procured through WhatsApp, I was wrong. Whereas the supermarket mangoes I grew up eating are fibrous and weirdly crisp and have little discernible fragrance, Pakistan’s Anwar Ratol and Chaunsa mangoes — the kind I picked up from the Detroit airport’s cargo bay — smell strongly of flowers and have a custardlike creaminess that drips with sticky-sweet juice. A popular method of consumption involves rolling the small, yellow-green fruit around, slicing off the top, and sucking out the liquefied pale-yellow or ochre flesh, like you’re drinking a juice box from nature. These mangoes, Pakistanis contend, are among the best varieties in the world.
I love mangoes too, and ate them often when living in Latin America. (Fun Fact: I once had a roommate with a phobia of mangoes. He couldn’t be in the same room as one). Yet, perhaps due to the way fruit is de-centered in U.S. diets, I’ve never craved a certain variety of any fruit, let alone mangos. I barely notice the difference between red grapes and green ones (both taste the same; the green ones give me headaches). I prefer tart Granny Smith apples to all other types, but that differentiation barely requires a sophisticated palate. Only a few weeks ago did I discover the world of difference between one variety of fruit versus another — where this new taste bordered on the sacred.
It wasn’t a Pakistani mango that brought on this revelation but a peak-season North Carolina-grown peach. I vacationed to my grandmother’s house in Greensboro, N.C. for 10 days in September, and Jackie visited for a weekend where she hit the local farmer’s market and bought pecks of peaches.
I declined an offer to try one. Peaches can feel too mealy and only mildly sweet to me. But a few days after she left, Jackie texted me to see if I would drive back more peaches because, as she wrote, “Dang these peaches are so good!”
After finding one of the last peach baskets left at the following week’s farmer’s market, I left a few with my grandmother and took the rest back to Florida. There, I finally tried them. It was mind-exploding goodness. Tender flesh that melted away in your mouth and sweetness that peaked mid-bite. I asked my friends if Florida-grown peaches tasted like this, and got a resounding no.
While I’m a much less picky eater now than I was as a child, certain bad habits remain. Clearly, I have a weird predisposition against enjoying fresh fruit. Even within one fruit, I’m missing a world of tastes and textures that make me want to make up for lost time. Do these peaches inspire in me a hallowed fervor like the Pakistani mangoes? It’s too soon to say. I mean, many poets on the Indian subcontinent wrote odes to the mango. Here’s a lustful ditty shared by the pop superstar Ariana Grande shared on Twitter, and originally written by Amir Khusrau, a beloved poet born in the year 1253.
The freezer at our house remains stuffed with peaches that Jackie plans to bake into pies and turnovers and other delectable sweets. Some of these treats will be sold through Otto’s Bread Club or given away to friends and family. I will steal as much as I can get away with.
And while not quite medieval India poetry, any peach devotee can at least turn to ’90s alternative rock for a double entendre-laden tribute to this special stone fruit (thanks for the Presidents of the United States of America). Look out!
-matt
Won’t you be a peach and share Sunshine + Microbes with your friends? :)
Four More Things We Like This Week
2️⃣ Florida Avocado Season!!
While we’re on the subject of fruits, it’s Florida avocado season and the big old tree in my backyard is dropping delicious fruit. Florida-grown avos get a bad rap, as the ones sold in the store tend to have a watery flavor and very low fat content compared with the creamier Hass avocado grown in California and Mexico. But I am here to tell you NOT ALL FLORIDA AVOCADOS. There is a wide variety of avocados found in the Sunshine State, and many are positively thiccc with creamy fat content. So this is just a little reminder to go out and get yourself some non-blood avocados while you still can. Colab Farms in Stuart has fab Choquettes for sale on Wednesdays. And many folks with backyard trees barter at roadside stands (like Barbour’s and Country Club produce here in Martin County). So go avocado toast it up to your heart’s content!
-jackie
Learn more here:
3️⃣ An Easy Harissa-Flavored Dinner
We asked readers earlier this month about that one ingredient in their pantry that they bought for a specific recipe — and then totally forgot about. Jackie whipped up some ideas on what to do with that long-lost ingredient.
Sarah inquired about an errant jar of harissa paste. Here’s a fish preparation that’s perfect for a solo weeknight dinner or a dinner party with friends:
Preheat oven to 425°F
Add 1 part olive oil to 3 parts harissa paste.
Sprinkle salt on fish filet of your choice and slather in mixture.
Lay fish on parchment-lined pan. Nestle some olives, lemon wedges, and cherry tomatoes around the fish.
Bake until fish is cooked through (time will depend on thickness, but it’s about 6-8 minutes for 1-in. thick snapper filets)
-jackie
4️⃣ This Restaurant Review of Overpriced Vegetables
A media reporter commented this week that one sign of creeping post-pandemic normalcy is the New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells being let loose for a satisfyingly brutal review. The review in question referred to Wells’ demolition of upscale dining room Eleven Madison Park. The restaurant made waves in May by announcing it would be forgoing meat for an all-vegan menu. Still, that same menu would serve up a 10-course meal that cost a whopping $335. Would those prices feel ludicrously elitist? Yes, oh God, yes.
Wells’ review makes clear that the restaurant basically only substituted veggies for meat in recipes without ever questioning if that was the appropriate use for said veggies. In one delicious section of the review, Wells refers to a beet being forced to do things no beat should be forced to do. The result tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.
But the real kicker in the story comes at the end where we learn about the SECRET BEEF ROOM
Eleven Madison Park still buys meat, though. Until the year ends, the menu offered to customers who book a private dining room includes an optional beef dish, roasted tenderloin with fermented peppers and black lime. It’s some kind of metaphor for Manhattan, where there’s always a higher level of luxury, a secret room where the rich eat roasted tenderloin while everybody else gets an eggplant canoe.
-matt
5️⃣ All Smiles at Sunshine + Microbes :)
We titled our most recent newsletter “Jackie Takes a Terrible Photo”. It was inspired by some thinking around the weirdness of self-promotion, which was inspired itself by this rather lovely photo taken by the talented Amy Springer and the caption below:
When I was 13 an uncle told me to “stop it with that fake smile you always have on.” That comment changed my relationship with my smile, and from then on having my photo taken has caused me buckets of anxiety.
I am so grateful to my friend @amyjmarie, who loves to take photos and has a magical knack for capturing the spirit of moments, places, and people. She’s taken just about every photo of me that I actually like, and in the process has done so much to repair my relationship to my smile and the way it looks in 2D.
I think this culture of 24/7 documentation and self-promotion is dumb and mostly harmful. But also, I am glad we have the technology to visually capture moments in our lives. And I’m glad people like my sweet and talented friend Amy exist, who have the ability to make people feel seen and beautiful.
Also I made a really nice apple pie with apples I brought back from North Carolina.
-jackie
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is a cook and kitchen educator based in Stuart, Fla . She runs Otto’s Bread Club and is co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a communications strategist at the ACLU of Texas. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.