The Tree I Love to Love: The Wild Mango

As someone who was introduced to the fruit of the mango in adulthood (I ate my first one in Singpore in 1989) I fell hard for the fruit and wait for the fruiting season like a kid waits for Christmas Eve. The trees are in bloom now, domesticated varieties and wild. By March we should get the first fruit.

I have learned that there are dozens of varieties of mangoes, a handful that are of greatest importance commercially. There are in-season mangoes and plae svay koch-redew: mangoes that fruit out of season, which the Cambodians call koch, a word that is used to describe something that is wrong, bad, or incorrect. And Cambodians are suspicious of fruits which are out of season, telling each other that the Thais (or the Chinese) inject chemicals to make this happen.

Most mangoes in Cambodia, like tomatoes here, are eaten green, tart and hard.  One might guess that there are similar reasons for this: green mangoes, like hard, unripe tomatoes keep longer, are easier to transport without damage, and stay edible long enough to get to the final customer. But Cambodians love slivers of green mango, piled high, doused with fish sauce and eaten with grilled fresh fish. (Most ripe mangoes are eaten by visitors).

The Khmer language even has a taste category that English does not to describe the taste of green mango: ju-eim. Eim is from p'eim, or sweet, and ju means sour. We know of sweet-and-sour, in reference to the condiment used in Chinese cooking, a combination of tastes that retain their individuality and integrity: one sweet, one sour. You have to taste a partly green, partly ripened mango to get the point of the Khmer word. The taste you get is not a combination of two individual tastes, but rather perceptions of sweet and sour that happen at exactly the same time.

The picture above was taken at Phnom Andet, northwest of Phnom Santuk, Kampong Thom Province along Route 6. A stand of leaning bamboo obscures the tree in part.