Mango season has arrived and everywhere you turn there are piles upon piles of mangoes waiting to be feasted upon. Arguably, mangoes are best served and eaten fresh, but, occasionally, some go a step ahead and use the fruit as inspiration to whip up gourmet treats; pastry chefs at Caramel deli at Vivanta by Taj, Thycaud, for instance. The delicatessen is celebrating the mango with a two-week-long ‘Mango fest’ that features a range of sweet and savoury delicacies.
“The variety and abundance of mangoes available locally this season is too good to resist experimenting with,” says executive chef Jose Thomas. “We always try to come up with something different based on seasonal fruits and vegetables and this time we chose to highlight the mango, especially because the fruit works brilliantly in both savouries and desserts and can be paired with a number of other ingredients,” he adds, handing over the special menu.
Listed on the menu are savouries, desserts and beverages, a pleasant mix of Indian and continental items. Some of them immediately capture the eye such as the two non-vegetarian savoury dishes – fresh mango and smoked chicken open sandwich and grilled prawns and mango salad (there are no vegetarian savouries on the menu). The former is something akin to a bruschetta, an Italian antipasto made of grilled bread.
Here the bread comes topped with smoked chicken, fresh greens and slices of ripe mango, drizzled with BBQ sauce and a dash of piquant aamchoor (mango) powder to tie it all together and to add a dash of spice too.
The cold salad is another must try, especially on a hot summer day. It has glass noodles laced with juliennes of raw and fresh mango, fresh greens and grilled tiger prawns. Both dishes are quite filling.
For those with a sweet tooth, there’s much more to snack on – mango and frangipane tart, mango and roasted almond strudel in puff pastry, mango cobbler, mango rabdi, cream cake and even cut mangoes with or without ice-cream.
A cobbler is a baked pie filled with fresh fruit; in this case mangoes and banana dusted with powered sugar. It’s an interesting eat, if not for anything else, the novelty of having mango ooze out of the thick pie crust. Rabdi, meanwhile, is a yoghurt-based dessert, quite rich and sweet like many traditional desserts.
For the chocolate cream cake, the chefs have paired mango with fresh ginger, layering the cake in such a way that each bite is alternately sweet and spicy.
Finish off the meal with fresh juice, mango milkshake, mango smoothie or aam ka panna (a traditional drink made of raw mango). Prices range from Rs. 150 to Rs. 550, plus taxes.
The fete’s on till June 5. Time: Contact: 6612345
