We have a large cookbook collection but I rarely follow a recipe closely. Mostly, I browse in the books as a source of inspiration. Lately, I have been enjoying The Vibrant Table by Anya Kassoff, with its beautifully and exuberantly photographed dishes by the author's daughter, Masha Davydova (see her blog, golubkakitchen.com.). This morning I was beguiled by Kassoff's Mango Lime Tartlet recipe. Which led me to want to make a mango dish myself (golden fruit for a cloudy morning).
So I made a Mango--blueberry crisp. Almost every cookbook has one fruit crisp or another in its dessert section, but I wanted to make an especially simple and basic one--hopefully with a delicate but direct flavour.
A mango, Queen of all the fruits, offers a radiant golden flesh (a feast for the eyes), a quite dreamy fragrance and a divinely light, buoyant sweetness. Such a crisp would of course be very good with other fruits in combination, but I like it with wild blueberries.
To make the Crisp: in a round glass baking dish, mix one ripe mango cubed, or two small Alphonso mangoes, with one cup and a half of blueberries (I used wild frozen blueberries) and two tablespoon of sugar. In a food processor, mix 2/3 cup of oats, 1/3 cup of almonds, 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 4 tbsp of crude organic coconut oil. Spread this mixture over the fruit and bake at 350C for 30 min. Serve with lots of vanilla-scented whipped cream and sliced mango.
The Raw and the Cooked, MYTHOLOGIQUES is a new column on the culture of eating and cooking, with contributions by various authors. The column name is borrowed from the title of a book by Claude Levi-Strauss. It is spontaneous, a little amusing but serious at the same time.