cwtm-book-winter

tropics

Mango–Chia Seed Pudding with
Cashew-Coconut Cream

The orange flesh of sweet ripe mangos is blended with coconut, vanilla, and chia seeds. The word “chia”
derives from an ancient Mayan term for “strength,” an apt term for this distinctive and nutritious
“superfood.” The seeds add thickness and a playful, bubbly texture to the mango pudding, which in
turn provides a contrastive measure of fruity, textured tang to the delectable cream layered over it.
This cashew-coconut cream—utterly smooth, with flecks of vanilla bean lending a warm vanilla
savor—is a tropical snow-white antithesis to winter, in winter. You’ll want to eat up every last bit,
right down to the creamy beads of chia edging the spoon.

The whole dessert calls for one 13.5-ounce can of unsweetened coconut milk. Pour the coconut
milk into a container and whisk to combine the creamy top layer with the watery part. Then divide
in half. Use one half for the pudding and the other half to make the cream. Some brands of coconut
milk come in small 5.5-ounce sizes, the perfect volume for each part of this recipe.
Serves 6

Mango Pudding 1 Make the mango pudding: Add the coconut milk and mangos
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
(1/2 of a 13.5-ounce can or one 5.5- to a blender; buzz until smooth. (You should have at least 3 cups
ounce can) purée; if not, add water to make the 3 cups.) Transfer to a bowl. Mix
2 ripe mangos, peeled, pitted, and in the honey, vanilla extract, and chia seeds. Transfer to a bowl and
cut into chunks (3 to 31/2 cups mango refrigerate until firm, at least 30 minutes.
flesh; see the Cook’s Note)
2 Make the cream: Drain the cashews. Add the cashews, coconut
[Continues on next page]
milk, coconut oil, honey, salt, and vanilla extract to a blender. Cut
the vanilla bean in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds with the tip

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1/4 cup raw honey of a small knife (see the illustration, page 141), and add the seeds to
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract the blender. (Reserve the pod to add to sugar or alcohol.) Buzz until
1/4 cup chia seeds smooth. Transfer to a container and refrigerate until thickened. The
cream will firm up considerably overnight, taking on a thick, luscious,
Cashew-Coconut Cream scoopable consistency.
1/2 cup cashews, soaked for 4 hours
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk 3 Serve the mango pudding with a big dollop of coconut cream
(1/2 of a 13.5-ounce can or 1
5.5-ounce can) on top.
2 tablespoons coconut oil (virgin or
aroma-free) or more (see the Cook’s
Note)
3 tablespoons raw honey
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean

Cook’s Note

For a thick cashew-coconut cream that scoops like ice cream, use 1/2 cup coconut oil instead of the 2 tablespoons.

The easiest way to prepare a mango for this dish is to peel it, then cut two large oblong hemispheres or“cheeks”along each side of
the large pit. Now that you’ve removed the cheeks, cut off the remaining two “sliver moon”pieces on the sides of the pit. Cut the
cheeks and sliver moons into chunks for easy blending.

For eating, the“hedgehog”technique is fun. Do not peel; slice off the cheeks and score the flesh at 1-inch intervals in both directions.
Bend the skin back so that the exposed flesh resembles the checker-scored back of a hedgehog. Bite into the mango and let the sticky
juice dribble down your chin. In the end, you’ll likely have a clean white seed and the urge to pick the mango fibers from your teeth.

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English Girl Eats and I watch she feel it man if you see
Her First Mango as something precious the English rose
she face was bliss
a kind of love poem then she smile and say down to the pink
looks delicious of she toes
If I did tell she
hold this gold and I tell she and when she finish
of sundizzy don’t waste sweet words she smile
tonguelicking juicy when sweetness and turn to me
mouthwater flow in you hand
ripe with love lend me your hanky
from the tropics just bite it man my fingers
peel it with the teeth are all sticky
she woulda tell me that God give you. with mango juice
trust you to be
melodramatic or better yet and I had to tell she
do like me mother what hanky
so I just say used to do you talking bout
taste this mango and squeeze you don’t know
till the flesh when you eat mango
and I watch she hold turn syrup you hanky
the smooth cheeks nibble a hole is you tongue
of the mango then suck the gold
blushing yellow like bubby man just lick
and a glow in child mouth you finger
rush to she own cheeks squeeze and tease out you call that
every drop of spice culture
and she ask me lick you finger
what do I do now sounds nice you call that
just bite into it? me friend tell me culture

and I was tempted and I remind she unless you prefer
to tell she that this ain’t to call it
why not be a devil apple core colonization
and eat of the skin so don’t forget in reverse
of original sin the seed
suck that too —john agard
but she woulda tell me the sweetest part
trust you to be the juice does run
mysterious down to you heart

so I just say
it’s up to you
if you want to peel it

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On Dithyrambs to Chocolate
(and a Cantata to Coffee)

Marcello Malaspina, a Florentine statesman, chocolate as a royal drink and a wedding bev-
lawyer, and writer, composed in 1741 a dithy- erage. They added vanilla to the Mayan con-
ramb to celebrate the food of the gods. This coctions, which generally contained maize,
poetic form had been popular in Classical allspice, honey, and chiles. Although com-
Greece and Rome as a means of honoring plex and varied, the array of Mesoamerican
Dionysus or Bacchus, the divinity of wine, chocolate drinks and porridges were all dark,
blood, and the theater. Such wild songs to savory, pleasantly bitter, and spicy.
Bacchus enacted the merging of the poet and
his audience with the blood and body of the Chocolate seems always to have been a
god in ecstatic celebrations that could be com- beverage of the elite, whether Aztec nobles
pared to the Christian Mass. Now, however, a or Jesuit clerics. After the Spanish conquest
nonalcoholic drink had become available to a of Mexico, chocolate was transformed, cre-
wider Italian public than the grand ducal fam- olized, and sweetened by nobles and court-
ily in the Pitti Palace—a drink the Aztecs had iers, who would laze around all day nursing a
once associated with their own very lifeblood. delicious cup. Noble women would have their
Malaspina wrote of this sweet drink: servants bring a big pot of chocolate to Mass,
since consuming chocolate wasn’t considered
… our Deity breaking the fast. Privileged devotees could
sip chocolate at will, because the Spanish had
no longer called the Tuscan first adopted it as a potable medicine and
oddly did not classify it as a food.
but the great American Bacchus
Modern scientists have since confirmed
while, in our drinking, we now urge chocolate’s medicinal properties: It contains
serotonin, a mood-altering hormone, and can
everyone praying to give us faith make you feel really good as long as you con-
sume it in enormous quantities. In any event,
that of all drinks, CHOCOLATE is the king. throughout the Baroque period and the Age
of Reason, chocolate was the preferred drink
The genus name of the cacao tree, at noble and ecclesiastical tables. It was
Theobroma, indeed translates as “food of the pushed to its culinary limits by the Italians,
gods”; yet for 90 percent of its history, choc- as exemplified by the renowned Jasmine
olate was only drunk, not eaten. The first Chocolate developed for the Grand Duke of
people to develop chocolate by fermenting, Tuscany. The glory of chocolate is affirmed by
drying, and roasting the seeds of the cacao Malaspina’s later dithyramb in honor of the
pod and grinding its nibs into cacao liquor “Deity,” the “great American Bacchus,” the new
were the Olmecs of Mexico, a mere three European God of Chocolate.
thousand years ago. The Mayans, who like
the Aztecs prepared chocolate for their nobil- Rivalry Between Chocolate and Coffee
ity, even worshiped the god of Cocoa in their Only after the French Revolution did cof-
pantheon. fee and tea supplant chocolate as the favored
drinks of philosophes, literati, and bohemians
The Aztecs adopted chocolate as a sym- (in France and Italy, at least), and of business-
bol for blood and even used it as coinage. men (in England, the Netherlands, Germany,
(Edible currencies were not unusual in early
societies; the ancient Egyptians sometimes
used grain as money, and peppercorns some-
times served as a money substitute in medi-
eval Europe.) Above all, the Aztecs valued

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