Sweet taste stirs memories of Cuba

When I returned to Cuba in 1999 after 29 years, it took me days to gather the courage to drive up to Cuabitas, our old neighborhood in the mountains above Santiago, to see what had become of my mother's childhood home.

Divided between two families, it was a shadow of the graceful, mustard-colored mansion I remembered, a happy place surrounded by fruit groves lovingly tended by my grandfather, Santiago Parlade, and his daughters.

Though many of the fruit trees were gone, my grandfather's favorite mango tree was still standing, its sprawling branches covered with lacy, golden flowers. Seeing it going strong after so many years lifted my spirit; it was the one hopeful sign on a painful and depressing visit.

That tree was my grandfather's proudest creation, a prolific bearer of peach-shaped fruit with juicy, saffron-colored flesh and delicate yellow skin suffused with a gorgeous pink blush. It was my childhood guide to the seasons, blooming in time for Christmas, bearing green fruit when my May birthday was near and supplying us with what seemed to be an endless bounty of mangoes just before summer vacation.

Though my slender, silver-haired grandfather was a shipbuilder by trade, he was a gifted amateur pomologist, and that tree was the last and most successful of his mango breeding experiments. A cross between the Corazon and other types I can't recall, it was known in our area as the Parlade.

Each morning, he would search his trees for ripening fruit, carefully pulling them down with a long, forked pole and placing them on a windowsill. When the Parlade mangoes were ripe, he would massage them between his long, bony hands until the flesh practically melted within. Then he would puncture the skin and hand us the fruit so we could suck out the juice.

The huge bizcochuelos with their turpentine-smelling sap were reserved for dessert, and we would cut into long, fat slices after lunch with a certain degree of ceremony. There was no etiquette to eating the Toledo mangoes that grew on a dwarf tree near a side patio. Tiny, fibrous and especially sweet, they had large, roundish seeds that we sucked like lollipops, juice dripping down our cheeks.

How I would have loved to take budwood from those precious trees back to Miami. If I had dared, I would have been following a well-trod path that is at least a century and a half old.

The first documented mango in Florida, the so-called No. 11, came from Cuba in 1861. It was followed in the 1880s by a Cuban variety with a penetrating, resinous aroma called Turpentine here and mango de hilacha on the island.

It's believed that an English physician working for a slave-trade company introduced a single mango seed from Jamaica to Cuba in 1789. The origin of that fruit is uncertain, but it most probably came from India through Brazil via the Portuguese.

"The great majority of Florida mangoes have been grafted on rootstock belonging to the sturdy Cuban Turpentine," says Richard Campbell, senior curator of tropical fruit at Williams Grove at the Fair- child Farm in Homestead, Fla., a scientific and outreach facility of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.

A chance encounter between the Turpentine and the Mulgoba, a beautiful Indian mango with red skin introduced in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1898, gave rise to the prized Haden and its progeny, a long line of important commercial cultivars including the prolific Tommy Atkins.

The Mulgoba tree that Campbell planted at Williams Grove is a graft from the original Palm Beach County, Fla., tree, while the Turpentine was grafted from budwood taken from a 100-year-old tree in Snapper Creek Hammock, where it's thought mangoes were introduced to Miami.

These are just two of the 450 mangoes from all over the world that Campbell and his Colombian-born colleague, Noris Ledesma, have planted at Williams Grove, creating the largest mango germplasm collection outside India and Southeast Asia.

At Williams Grove, you will find the Cuban mangoes of my memory, the tiny Toledo and the bizcochuelo, the Prieto (dark-skinned with lightly fibrous orange flesh) and the stupendous, red-skinned San Felipe from Western Cuba.

"You can taste sugar cane with a backdrop of resin in these mangoes," Campbell says. He obtained the San Felipe graft wood in 1994 from his friend, Pedro Lopez, a Cuban exile, and has been surprised by its performance.

"San Felipe is the god of Cuban mangoes," Ledesma told me, perfect for Florida gardens.

Campbell considers many of the commercial varieties sold in Florida stores, such as the Tommy Atkins from Guatemala and Mexico, "an embarrassment to the mango." And he wants to extend the pleasure of eating exceptional mangoes by teaching farmers how to grow perfect fruit.

"If you can grow a good mango here in South Florida, you are not competing with the fruit in the grocery store because it is not the same product," he says. Mangoes do not reach their full flavor potential with the nitrogen-rich synthetic fertilizers many commercial growers use to boost yield, he explains, but prefer light organic mulch.

Like many U.S. chefs, I would pay a premium to have a steady supply of Florida mangoes with rich and varied flavor profiles to serve at my restaurants rather than cheaper, lackluster imports.

Campbell and Ledesma practice what they preach at Williams Grove, managing the center like a family farm. At their weekend market, you can buy fruit and smoothies from whichever trees happen to be bearing for $1 apiece. The closest I have come to the childhood joy of eating my grandfather's mangoes was feasting on a dozen varieties Ledesma selected for me at Williams Grove.

Campbell and Ledesma have created a model of sustainable agriculture that makes economic sense, and have given mango lovers the opportunity to get reacquainted with the essence of the fruit.

When we Cubans get ourselves into a complicated mess, we say we are in an "arroz con mango," literally "rice with mango." This turn of phrase became a real dish in our home in Oriente Province during the severe food shortage of the late 1960s. We had plenty of mangoes that season, and wild culantro grew near the water well. With these two ingredients, my father created a dish of unexpected charm that made us all laugh. When I make my more abundant versions of the dish, such as this riff on Cuban-Chinese fried rice, I remember those hard times and the lighthearted way in which Cubans deal with adversity.

Serve with an avocado and watercress salad and a floral white wine such as Susana Balbo Crios Torrontes ($15) from Mendoza, Argentina.

Rice With Mango (Arroz con Mango)

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients

2 medium mangoes (preferably half-ripe)

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons Japanese brown rice vinegar or cider vinegar

1 teaspoon aged rum

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 small chicken breast (about 4 1/2 ounces), diced

1/4 pound smoked ham, cut into 1/4 inch dice

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dice

3 scallions with 3 inches green, finely chopped

5 medium shiitake mushrooms, rinsed, patted dried, stem removed and cut into 1/2-inch dice

4 cups cooked white rice

1 tablespoon finely chopped culantro or cilantro

A 2-egg omelet, lightly salted and coarsely chopped

1/4 cup frozen or fresh peas

Additional soy sauce to taste

Directions

Peel the mango and cut into 1/4-inch dice; place in a small bowl.

In another bowl, whisk the soy sauce with the vinegar, rum and sugar. Add the chicken and ham and toss to coat with the sauce. Set aside for at least 10 minutes.

In a wok or 12-inch skillet, heat the oil over medium heat until it sizzles. Add the garlic and saute for 10 seconds. Add the onion, bell pepper, scallion and mushrooms and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.

Add the chicken, ham and sauce, and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.

Add the rice, culantro or cilantro, diced omelet and peas, and cook, stirring with more soy sauce to taste or a bit of vinegar if needed, until all the ingredients are combined and the rice acquires a uniform tan color.

Add diced mangoes and toss with the rice to combine.

Culinary historian Maricel E. Presilla is the chef/co-owner of Cucharamama and Zafra restaurants in Hoboken, N.J. Her latest book is "The New Taste of Chocolate."