Summer seems to be in full swing now – Scotland is always the most beautiful to me when the sun is high in the cloudless sky. Thinking back to growing up, the heat was never welcomed in Pakistan but the much-awaited mangoes from the trees in the garden would be.
Late spring would see trees laden with tiny sour green "kayris" (raw mango) and I would get a bitter telling off from my grandmother when I sneakily stole these tiny piquant bursts of flavour as she waited expectantly for them come to full fruiting glory. Like most girls in Pakistan, I loved sour raw mango dipped courageously in black salt, red chilli and lemon juice.
We were always wary of over-indulging our savoury tooth too much with raw tamarind and mango. The old wives tales warned that too much tangy fruit would make our young bodies a bit more "womanly" – something an eight-year-old did not want to be taunted at school for.
But the real reason I would resist the temptation to pick the raw mangos would be the promise of fruit leather or, as we know it, "Aam Papar", which would be made with fully ripe mangoes in the summer.
The only thing similar to fruit leather when I was growing up were American sweets called "Fruit Roll Ups", which were always a request to anyone going to America on holiday. Though they bwere full of sugar and very little fruit juice, they did fulfil a childish desire, with their annoyingly sticky constancy and equally annoying fake flavour and colouring.
But nothing could beat my grandmother's Aam Papar – natural sweet goodness, tough chewy tooth-sticking texture and handmade with her passion. When I moved to Britain I would miss the summer mango varieties we grew up with, but now that Pakistan exports its Honey mango (sold as Langra mango in Pakistan), I love experimenting with ways I can use them. Though the sun maybe be shining in Scotland just now, it is nowhere near the 35 degree sun that was used to dry my grandmother's Aam Papar, so I usually make do with a low oven – though if you own a dehydrator, this works well too.
Expect a burst of summer in a bite as you chew your way through pure fruity goodness. The kick of heat from red chilli takes me back to hot sultry summers day of my childhood.
Salted Mango fruit leather with black pepper, honey and red chill flakes
Ingredients
2 large mangoes, preferably Pakistani Honey mangoes or any other sweet ripe mangoes, cored and cut into chunks
1 tablespoon honey
Juice of half a lime
½ tsp red chilli flakes
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp ground black pepper
Oven method:
1 In a medium saucepan, on a low heat, cook the fruit until it is soft and the juices are released.
2 Cover, leave to cool, then put in the fridge to properly chill.
3 Preheat oven to its lowest temperature setting (about 55-65 deg C)
4 Pour the fruit into a blender and add the honey, lemon and spices, then puree.
5 Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
6 Pour the fruit mixture onto parchment-lined pan – it should be about an eighth of an inch thick.
7 Put in the oven and bake for 4-6 hours, until leather peels away easily from the parchment. Using scissors, cut into rectangles and roll them up, parchment and all.
Dehydrator method:
1 Follow steps 1-4 of the oven method.
2 Spread the mixture out on to a dehydrator sheet to about 1/8 inch thickness.
3 Dehydrate at 130 F / 50 C for four hours. Check the fruit leather periodically – when it peels away easily, peel it off, flip it over and dry for another hour or two.
4 Remove from dehydrator and use scissors or a pizza roller to cut it into you desired shapes.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here