We use a
satellite dish to dry our pressed mango fruit into fruit leather.
The hot season is also the mango fruit season. What do you do if you have
too many fruits? Traditionally Thai farmers would make mango rolls or ‘mango
leather’. Pick mango fruits from the tree. Put them on a table in the shade
for a few days to allow them to ripen, i.e. to develop a full aroma and
sweetness. The variety we use is ‘Nam Dokmai’, organically grown at Dokmai
Garden in Chiang Mai.
Sliced and
ready to eat – sweet and tasty.
Peel the ripe mangos, slice them, discard the large seeds and heat the pulp
in a vessel for 2-3 hours to reduce the amount of water. Let it cool down.
Squeeze the pulp with your hands until it turns into a jam, and then smear
it out on a wax cloth, tray or old rice bag as in this picture. Put the
cloth in the sun for 2-3 days to allow it to dry. A satellite dish is handy,
also useful for drying chili, banana, squid and meat.
Nothing has been added to this product, this is plain dried fruit pulp. Such
rolls, called ‘mamuang keng’ or ‘mamuang goan’ where also a way for farmers
to make money. However, small-scale production at home is quite uncommon
today. Mango rolls or ‘mango leather’ can be stored a long time, while the
fresh fruit decays quickly. When food is available one has to preserve as
much as possible. In communities without irrigation, such as in the arid
Esan (Northeast of Thailand) there is not many other fresh greens available
in April.
Precipitation report: Only one occasion of rain in April: 3 mm on April
25th. In March we received 13 mm of rain (8 mm on the 3rd and 5 mm on the
4th of March). In February we received 20 mm (21 Feb. 8 mm, 17 Feb. 7 mm, 2
Feb. 5 mm). In January we received 9 mm (3 mm on Jan. 31st and 6 mm on Jan.
29th). During the past 18 month period, we have been forced to irrigate at
least once each month except in September 2012. The current drought
March-April 2013 is normal. The Climate Prediction Centre still forecasts a
neutral (normal) year.
