Dear reader,Mangoes were the first fruit I fell in love with. I still remember my first time. I was 17 years old. My best friend Ben and I were deliriously stoned and — for some reason — were craving smoothies. We wandered down the street to the grocery store (where I also worked as a checkout bagger), and stumbled around grabbing every appealing fresh, dried and frozen fruit we could afford.Back home, we slowly started cutting into the fruit. I picked up a mysterious specimen, all yellow and red and green, large like an ostrich egg. I showed it to my friend. “What’s this?”“You’ve never had a mango?” he asked, in hazy disbelief.He cut it up for me — slicing the plump cheeks from the seed, etching a crosshatched pattern into its flesh with a knife and handed it to me. I took my first bite. Hitchcock zoom. Lush, tropical, sour, sweet and sunshiney, it was perhaps the best thing I’d tasted in my life.The next day I started a Facebook group (dating myself … ) called “What the heck … mangoes are so dank?!?!,” and invited all eight of my friends to join. The group quickly showed so much shared enthusiasm for the fruit that I decided to start a Mango Club at my high school.I was the president, and Ben, who had introduced me to mangoes, was the vice president. I also happened to be my high school’s treasurer , so I was able to expand the budget for clubs and funnel some of the school’s money into the Mango Club’s coffers. Once a week at lunch, a dozen or so of us would gather in a classroom and enjoy fresh mangoes, along with other mango-flavored treats: candy, tea, chile-lime dried mango, etc.My love of mangoes has never wavered, following me into my adulthood. Several years ago, after reading this bombshell piece about the underground Pakistani mango trade by Ahmed Ali Akbar (who recently won a James Beard Award), I sought out a box of my own illicit mangoes, including a variety called Chaunsa, one of the most prized among connoisseurs. I managed to find a dealer in New York, whom I contacted on WhatsApp and met in a Starbucks parking lot in Flatbush. He arrived in a slick black car with dark tinted windows. I paid him, and he handed me a small cardboard package.The package filled my entire van with a perfume so strong I had to roll the windows down. When I got home, I opened the package and found six medium mangoes, wrapped individually in a protective foam cradle.I carefully cut one open the same way Ben had taught me to, and took a bite. You are reading our Cooking newsletter Sign up to get a taste of Los Angeles — and the world — in your own home and in your inbox every Friday By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads. My word! It tasted like someone had injected the thing with a cocktail of sunshine and honey. Just incredible. A few years later, when I was cooking at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, I ordered another box of Pakistani mangoes from a different provider. My friend from high school was in town, and we decided it was about time we had a Mango Club reunion. The box of a dozen mangoes was also quite expensive (about $7 per mango), and without our high school club budget to subsidize, we figured it would be more financially responsible to split it between a big group of people. On a warm August morning, we drove out to the cargo terminal of the Oakland airport, and there we received our package. Later that day, we gathered at my house with a new group of eight or so friends and feasted. In keeping with our old traditions, we also enjoyed other mango-flavored treats: some mango wine I’d made in the back of my van, freeze-dried mango, mango ice cream. Those mangoes, too, were fantastic. Yet, now living in Los Angeles, I (and we) are blessed to have access to world-class mangoes, like those from Wong Farms. You might have seen people raving about their incredible Golden Lady ($7.50 per pound) or Valencia Pride ($8 per pound) varieties on social media, or seen the ever-growing line to buy them at your local farmers market. The hype is real. These mangoes are some of the best I’ve ever had, and — take it from the president of the Mango Club — they’re worth the wait. Sadly, I can’t get myself to wait in the very long Wong Farms line at the Hollywood market, so I’ve been getting mine at their stand at the Wednesday morning Santa Monica market, where the line has tended to be shorter. Wherever you go, just get one (or 10). It doesn’t have to be from that particular farm — if you see in-season, local mangoes, don’t hesitate to grab a few. It’s the end of the season, and after a couple more weeks, you’ll have missed your chance.Oh, and as far as how I cut them: Currently a wearer of a protruding mustache, I’ve ditched the crosshatch-and-smash technique and aimed for a method that is a bit less messy. Now I usually cut the cheeks from the seed and scoop the flesh out bite-by-bite with a spoon, or use a thin-rimmed glass to de-skin the cheek, and then cut that up however I please. While I’m too emotionally fragile these days to get deliriously stoned, if I had more mangoes than I could eat out of hand, I would gladly cut them up and freeze them for future sober smoothies. If you have more mangoes than you know what to do with, here are a couple of recipes from the archive to get your imagination’s juices flowing:Instant Pot Hatch Chile Pork Tacos With Kohlrabi Mango SlawMake a slaw with mango, cilantro, kohlrabi and lime while the braised pork cooks (in an Instant Pot) for these easy tacos from former Times cooking editor Genevieve Ko. Fresh or roasted Hatch chiles balance the richness of the pork, and dried ones give the sauce an earthy depth. The mango slaw is what gives it a tropical. Cook time: 45 minutes. Serves 8.Get the recipe. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times) Mango-Ginger Ice CreamA handful of fresh peeled and chopped ginger infuses the milk and cream for this summer ice cream from former L.A. Times Food editor Russ Parsons. The ginger brings out the spicy-fresh aspect of a ripe mango. He says, “In an ice cream context, it is a revelation.Time: 20 minutes. Serves 8.Get the recipe. Happy mango season to all who celebrate! Consider yourself an honorary member of the Mango Club.Yours, CodyP.S. Last week’s Cooking newsletter was missing a link to the recipe for Carolynn Carreño’s No-Fail Chocolate Frosting. Here it is. Eating out this week? Sign up for Tasting Notes to get our restaurant experts’ insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they’re dining right now.
