Dulce De Leche Recipes

Mangoes perk up salads, main dishes, desserts

Oh, my, do we have mangoes this year. The tropical fruits hang heavy on backyard trees all over the Tampa Bay area, and are selling for a buck each at some grocery stores.

July is time to tango with the mango, and I am certainly doing a lot of dancing. From bread to muffins, salsas and salads, we just may turn yellow-orange at our house from the overload of juicy, sweet mangoes. It's also the month that the fruit is celebrated at festivals around the state (see box on Page 6E).

Twelve years ago, with a young wolverine in tow, we bought some tiny mango trees, among them a Florida Cogshall, at the annual mango festival at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Coral Gables. The string of 2004 hurricanes nearly did the Cogshall in, but with some TLC it regained its momentum and this year, for the first time, it is laden with fruit. The baby wolverine is tall enough now to pick the mangoes that neither his father nor I can reach.

Pendulous pink bombs droop from the Cogshall in our front yard. Passers-by are noticing, gazing up as they walk dogs or themselves on an evening constitutional. A few dare to filch a glorious specimen or two.

The Cogshall is not a commercial tree because the skin of the fruit is thin and once the fruit ripens, it goes soft quickly. It doesn't ship well. But its flavor is ambrosial, with coconut and buttery overtones and having none of the fiber that marks most commercially grown mangoes.

Our other trees are bearing fruit this year, too, among them a Julie (Caribbean), Dot (South Florida), Ice Cream (Trinidad and Tobago) and Mallika (India). It's a regular United Nations of mangoes in our yard.

Jene VanBustel, owner of Jene's Tropicals in St. Petersburg, says she has had many customers sharing tales of overflowing mango trees this summer. VanBustel sells many of the noncommercial and "condo" varieties, cultivated to grow only about 6 feet tall.

She's stumped as to why the fruit is so voluminous this summer and wondered if two unusually cold winters had something to do with that. She is partly right.

Dr. Richard Campbell, director of horticulture at Fairchild, says a colder-than-usual December coupled with an extremely dry spring has brought us a mango bounty. South Florida is also experiencing a bumper crop.

Many delicious mango varieties have been cultivated in South Florida by Fairchild and University of Florida scientists, but the state doesn't produce much of a crop anymore. There are fewer than 2,000 acres of commercial mango groves in Florida, most in Miami-Dade County. Compare that with more than 550,000 acres of citrus.

pureSunday | blog » Blog Archive » [bake] dulce de leche apple pie

Happy Independence Day! It’s time to buss out any and every metaphor for the American. Like baseball. White Picket Fence in Suburbia. The Ford and the Chevy. Freedom. Fast Food (no). Hamburger, Fries, and Coke (yes). Summer Road Trips. Lemonade stands. Plaid – Messenger Bags – Ray Bans. Celebrity Obsessions. They are things we love and hate to admit that we love because they sound stereotypical. But here’s one thing we’re all unashamedly proud of:

The All-American Apple Pie.

Did I bake Apple Pie for this celebration of America? No, but the Fourth is a perfect day to post about one of my best-loved desserts: Dulce de Leche Apple Pie! (what happened to classic All-American? Sorry, I’m always biased to the dulce de leche. I lick it out of the can…) Plus, you can’t deny it, the sweet milky caramel addition is a warmed-and-welcomed delight.

In making this, I have to admit: I just buy the crusts. It’s cheating, it’s less work, but I do it primarily because it gets so hot and humid in my home, that it’s a faulty attempt to want a wonderfully flaky crust. I do, however, make my own dulce de leche. My Lola used to put the unopened can under boiling water, but I am so terrified of it exploding and/or zipping my face into disfigurement.

Anyway, I get wonderful raves about this pie, and I hope it does you the same wonders.

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