Easy Mango Salsa

I am celebrating getting back to blogging with an easy mango salsa. My inspiration for this recipe comes from The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone, which is the August/September selection for Cook the Books. Stone’s book is a fascinating dive into the life of David Fairchild – a nineteenth century botanist and explorer. Fairchild brought to the United States a cornucopia of fruits, including mangoes, avocados, dates, and citrus. And if you ever wondered how the Meyer lemon got its name – well, take some time to read this lovely book.

I am always fascinated by how we’ve come to eat the foods that we eat. Every time I cook an artichoke or clean a Dungeness crab, I think about how it came to be that humans decided that this strange thing was worth eating. Stone’s book explores this theme of how we have come to enjoy many of the foods in our grocery aisles. He also looks at the fails: how mangosteen, for example, is not a common household snack.

My easy mango salsa is inspired by Fairchild’s search for mango varieties. I found a gigantic mango in one of our local groceries. I am guessing it was a different type than the more generic mango that shows up in most produce sections. I can see eating this easy mango salsa with tacos, with chips, with a cheese plate. I opted to include this as a topping for a spinach salad with smoked albacore tuna from a sustainable fishery here on the Oregon coast. It was amazing! I encourage you to make the easy mango salsa and definitely read The Food Explorer.