Monday, August 08, 2011

Chaunsa Mangoes in August

Chaunsa Mangoes

It's August already. I thought that mango season was pretty much over, but then a colleague of mine who just returned from Delhi put these on my desk, saying that North India and Pakistan still had these late bloomers called chaunsas (apparently you can get them at Mustafa right now too), which incidentally were his second favorite type of mango behind the alphonso. He said that they are are never sour, unlike Thai mangoes, and he felt that they were even better than those Burmese mangoes that I like so much.

They were definitely very sweet; it was almost like pouring sugar into my mouth. In fact, they were so sweet that I kinda wished they were a little sour to give it a tangy zip. They definitely weren't as rich as an alphonso either, thus really making them a little one-dimensional. Well, I liked how juicy they were, and that something so sweet was available so late in the season after all. But I think I still prefer the Burmese ones, whose well-balanced taste had more character (as far as I could remember, anyway).

3 comments:

anonymous paul said...

you should get your hands on some philippine mangoes. really.

Makanmata said...

Great site, and I particularly enjoy the mango shootouts.

The next time you are in Brazil, please check out the "Palmer" mangoes. The best ones are grown in the State of Bahia, but you can find them in markets in Rio (the best specimens can usually be found in the Cobal do Leblon market). To my taste, this is the best mango in the world, but is almost never exported (although many lesser Brazilian varieties are). Although the Alphonso gets all the glory, it is actually a hybrid developed in Brazil and brought to Goa by the Duke of (Afonso de) Albuquerque when it was a Portuguese Colony. The Palmer is similar to the Alphonso, but to my taste is richer, often larger, and with more fruit to pit. For me, the Bahian Palmer is the king of the Mangoes.

Lynn's Life said...

i would take these sweet mangoes,bananas,granny smith apples,raspberries & strawberries together in a fruit salad. imagine the taste there with the sweet,tart & mellow of the bananas. YUMMY
i shall keep eating vicariously thru u!