Speaking of mango, I've been meaning to tell you about my most favorite ever in the whole wide wild world life-altering amazing salad. I started making it a few years ago in Ghana, and it has never gotten old. It's so good that I've tried to spread it around the globe like I'm paid to promote it. Like I'm the leader of a mango avocado cult and have committed myself to preaching its virtues. By day I masquerade as an office worker, but by night I change into a mango avocado superhero outfit and brandish a cutting board and knife. It's beauty is in its simplicity:
Mango Avocado Salad
1 ripe mango
1 ripe avocado
a bunch of chopped fresh cilantro
a tiny squeeze of lime, if you must
The key is the ripeness. You want a today mango and a today avocado - not tomorrow, not a few days from now. In Ghana, this is how you buy them: today? or tomorrow? They sell them at stands next to each other in beautiful piles of possibility. Perfect ripeness will make a perfect salad. Trust the ladies selling them: they know today from today. You also want them to be roughly the same size, so they're equal players in the final game. The cilantro should be fresh and fragrant.
Ghana, by the way, is a raw food paradise. The papayas are enormous. The tomatoes taste like tomatoes. The oyster mushrooms may make you blush. The streets are paved with coconuts. The pineapples taste like coconuts. The tiny bananas are little pieces of heaven. The peppers are hot and powerful. The cocoa is plentiful. The kelewele - plantain roasted with ginger - isn't raw, but when its smell lazily drifts over the dark streets at night, it will make you want to sing.
Chop the mango and avocado into equal size chunks - just enough to fit on a fork (to do this easily with the avocado, cut in half, jiggle off each side from the pit, score the chunks, then peel away the peel and let them fall into the bowl. You do sort of the same thing with the mango, only it's a bit messier.)
Sprinkle with cilantro. Toss. Eat. Begin converting others.
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