Mamuang kuan

Mango purée cooked down to a paste and dried in thin sheets until it peels away clean.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg ripe mango flesh
• 200 g caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 0.5 teaspoon salt
• oil, for the trays

Method

1. COOKED DOWN FIRST, THEN DRIED. Purée spread straight onto a tray takes two days and ferments at the edges before the middle is dry. Reduced in a pan to a thick paste first, it dries in six to eight hours.
2. Use mango that is properly ripe and fragrant. Underripe fruit gives a leather that is sour and pale however much sugar goes in.
3. Blend the flesh completely smooth and press it through a sieve -- fibres show as hard threads in a thin sheet.
4. Purée, sugar, lime and salt in a wide heavy pan. The lime keeps the colour and the salt stops it being flatly sweet.
5. Over a medium-low heat, stirring often, 40 to 50 minutes. IT SPITS as it thickens; a lid held at an angle helps.
6. IT IS READY WHEN A SPOON DRAWN THROUGH LEAVES THE BOTTOM OF THE PAN VISIBLE for a second. Short of that it never dries to a leather.
7. Spread it 3 mm thick on oiled trays or lined baking sheets, as evenly as you can. Thick patches stay tacky.
8. Dry in the sun under a net for 6 to 8 hours, or in an oven at 60C with the door propped open for 5 to 6 hours.
9. IT IS DONE WHEN IT PEELS AWAY FROM THE TRAY CLEANLY in one sheet and is tacky but not wet to a finger.
10. Cut into strips with oiled scissors and roll each in cellophane. They keep weeks; unwrapped they fuse together.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes