My love affair with mangoes goes way back to summers spent in Mexico. Late afternoons on the plaza, after the rain had doused everything, fidgeting with anticipation as the mango man peeled me a big ripe one with his blackened steel knife, pierced it with a stick, then drenched it with lime and sprinkled on salt and earthy red chile. Sweet, slick, soft almost to the point of slimy and oh, so juicy. These flavors reach back inside me and conjure up memories of bustling markets, the smell of burning leaves, the delight of a pirulí—that brilliant red elongated pyramid of a lollipop that I twirled and twirled in my mouth. Ah, childhood. Every year at this time I can get it back for a moment when I eat my first mango of the season.
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