Savoury Summer Delights: Green mango season is here

Mango is known as the king of fruits and justifiably so!

While the season for ripe mangoes is just around the corner, the crown prince -- green mango -- has already arrived in all its glory and taken the spotlight at Dhaka's bazaars.

In this sweltering heat, everyone desires a tangy and sour drink to keep cool and there is nothing quite like a tall glass of chilled, green mango mocktail.

Our love for Kalboishakhi is always peppered with picking unripe mangoes from the lawns or fields and eating them with just a little salt. The heat wave puts such a damper on our appetite that we seek a spicy, sharp taste to stimulate the palate. And green mangoes provide the right kind of tanginess one needs to ward off extreme heat.

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The shorbot and juice culture of old Dhaka

Looking back, I fondly recall open terraces heady with the smell of spices from the mango pickles soaked in mustard oil. The green skin of the sour fruit is scored with knife cuts and generously marinated in chilli and turmeric powder. This is then sundried for days until it is ready to be soaked in mustard oil -- an unbeatable, old pickle recipe and a crowd favourite.

Green mango in your papaya salad, chutney with a hint of five spices, jars of Kashmiri achars, sundried aam churs, or just dried green mango — all these are now being made in almost every household and stored for the year.

Charred mango wedges, green chilli, mint leaves, and salt; if you like it sweet then maybe a little sugar -- your aam panna is ready! Shredded mango slivers mixed with burnt chillies and a pinch of molasses make the best deshi sour concoction you can have. Green mango in our everyday lentil soup not only cleanses your palate but also gives you a refreshing feel.

The tangy fruit with a firm flesh and deep green skin is sliced or diced for salsa and salads.  And there is no comparison to our kind of simple, mango salsa -- aam bhorta. And every house in Dhaka has a kancha aam speciality going on for them.

Md Anwarul Huque is the managing director of Raj Chapai Agro Fruit Producer in Rajshahi, the mango capital of Bangladesh. He explains the trade dynamics of mangoes.

"There are retail and wholesale customers for green mangoes. The business of unripe mangoes is there, but not as thriving as that of ripe mangoes. Truckloads of this summer crop are sent to pickle factories every season, besides catering to the needs of small-time buyers. The best mango for pickles is green fazli but Lokhon bhog also rule the green mango market. There is plenty of scope to profit on the green mango season, which has not yet reached its potential."

According to Huque every year the growers in Rajshahi sell fruits that have fallen off during storms. "We sell them for Tk 10 a kilogramme and traders send them to Dhaka, where they are sold at exorbitant prices at the beginning of the season," informed Huque, adding that if a client wants only green mango then specific gardens are booked for them.

This year, because of unprecedented storms in the month of Falgun, almost 50 percent of mango blooms did not mature and thus the mango harvest will be only 30 to 40 percent of what it usually is. The untimely spring storms stalled the green mango season by 15 days so the full-blown kancha aam will hit the Dhaka markets by the end of April and continue for a month. The season will be very short. So, make the best use of the time, green mangoes are in supply during the hot summer days.