Manguinhas – another reason to visit your local feira

Here’s a little factiod for you: while many fruits have evolved bright colours to attract birds (birds have excellent colour vision), mangoes are generally a dull greenish-red colour because they have evolved to be eaten (and therefore distributed) by fruit bats and other animals that rely more on smell than sight to find food. See? 3 years studying zoology wan’t a complete waste was it? According to my old ecology lecturer, we silly humans have spent the last 100+ years attempting to breed bright, colourful mangoes which appeal to the average human shopper.

There are mango trees (mangueiras) all over Rio. In fact here’s the view out of my window right now:

Look out below! It’s that time of year again – the trees are laden with ripening fruit which are just waiting to make a mess of anyone foolish enough to pass below.

One of my favourite varieties of mango sold in Rio’s street markets is called Palmer. Palmer mangoes (developed in Florida apparently) are usually quite large with skin a mix of dull red and green, but as well as their delicious sweet flavour, the really great thing is that they have hardly any of those fibrous strings that get caught in your teeth.

As the market traders always say, Palmer mangoes are sem fios meaning you’ll have no need for fio dental (dental floss).

These big mangoes are available all year round and very tasty they are too, but just recently I spotted something new: Little mangoes. Tiny little mangoes. Tiny little yellow mangoes:

The Portuguese for mango is manga, so these tiny little fruit are called Manguinhas.

Well I’m a sucker for mini fruit, so I picked up a bag full of these little beauties for just R$5 (around US$2). Well they may be small, but they are bursting with flavour and their diminutive size helps overcome one of the standard mango’s few drawbacks: eating them can be a very messy business.

When I was 5, my family and I moved to Jerusalem for a year and that was where I first encountered this potentially deadly fruit. My father, an expert mango eater since he grew up in Africa, made one strict rule: my sister and I were only allowed to eat mangoes in the bath. If you’ve ever seen a 5 year old eat a big juicy mango, you’ll understand the wisdom of this rule.

However, such rules need not apply when you can fit the entire mango in your mouth! Admittedly this is not one of the most exciting videos I am responsible for, but at least it gives you an idea of the size of these things and how easy they are to peel and eat.

[2024: these are the mangos that Phil Rosenthal went nuts for when we were filming for Somebody Feed Phil!]

These little mangoes only appeared in the markets recently, which makes me think that they may not be around for long, so get out to your local street market and track them down!