Yes, still on macarons.. seems that I would never get rid of the bugs. This time... flavored with mango. I see that mango will be in season soon; well, it's already started. Since it's a native plant, we can find so many varieties... with name or without name. The one without name, of course the least desired... sour and fibrous. Only a few people like them, including me. Well, basically I like mangos whatever the taste... sour, sweet, juicy, or fibrous... doesn't really matter to me. My husband has his own names for different mangos he can find in the market... common mango (Harum Manis; easy to find everywhere), starchy mango (Indramayu) , fragrant fibrous mango (Kweni), aromatic mango (Gedong Gincu), yellow mango (Manalagi), sour mango (Semar), and so on and so on, which sometimes confuse me... and confuse himself! for there are too many varieties. Yes, as a foreigner in this country, all those local names are too difficult for him to remember; he named them based on their characteristics. Sometimes, in fruit stores, we can find imported mangos from Thailand or from Australia. But of course we like our mangos better, the local varieties have richer flavor than those imported one, and much cheaper too. I often wonder what kind of people buy those imported mangos...
In the office, Atiah brought some green mangos almost every week. She has one mango tree in her front yard... a Gadung mango tree... what a blessing.
My favorite mangoes are Gedong Gincu, Harum Manis, and green mango (unripe mango) from whatever variety. I also love Kesturi mango from Kalimantan. I used to eat Kesturi mango in my childhood when we lived in South Kalimantan. That was in 1970's. Kesturi mango is endemic plant in that province. In every mango season, my Mom and Dad went to villages in South Kalimantan looking for this particular kind of mango, and would buy them directly from the tree. It's so aromatic and sweet, small size around 7cm long and 5cm thick, and so fibrous. The skin is dark purplish green, covers the dark orange fibrous flesh. Since it's so fibrous, not many buy and plant Kesturi, and it becomes more and more difficult to find. In 1980's the local government tried to promote this endemic plant, but not much has been achieved until now. Kesturi is still hard to find. Gedong Gincu is aromatic but not as aromatic as Kesturi, and less fibrous.
To flavor macarons, I need the most aromatic mango I can find, which is Gedong Gincu. Last week I oven-dried some Gedong Gincu mango (see my post on oven-dried fruits), which the flavor I love so much. It was so intense! I process some in my food processor, trying to make powdered mango. But I couldn't make it fine, so it looked more like mango bits. Maybe I didn't dry it enough. Never mind. I mixed 25 grams of it in the almond-powdered sugar mixture, and resulted in macawrongs...
This is the pictures... they look perfect, but... I trick you! they have big air pockets!!
See the big airpocket under the surface?
Yes, those mango bits inside the macarons shells were not dry and fine enough. Taste-wise? yummy! and sooooo mango!
The next batch was plain macarons colored in orange, with some mango bits on top of the shells. They look nice, with just enough Gedong Gincu flavor from the mango bits. To add more mango flavor, I decided to make the filling using Gedong Gincu mango puree, mixed with swiss-meringue buttercream. Yum. Love the flavor a lot. Next time, I will take care on oven-drying the mango, make sure it's really dried and fine, and see how it will end up with.
