a taste of summer

i had a craving the other week for something savoury that would taste refreshing and celebrate the season. i had remembered seeing a recipe for mango salsa in one of my food magazines but since i had lent it out to a decent-food-deprived (a.k.a normal student) friend, i found a recipe on epicurious.com and decided to tweak it.

this goes great with pork (i served it with roasted pork loin steaks that i had marinaded with salt, pepper and rosemary overnight) and i would imagine, be really nice with some grilled chicken as well.

Mango Salsa

1 mango, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
bunch of coriander leaves, torn
4 pickled piquante peppers, chopped (alternative: 1/2 capsicum, chopped)
juice of 1/2 lime
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

(it is advisable to make the salsa at least 1hr ahead so that the flavours really come through)

i also made a middle-eastern-inspired aubergine (brinjal/eggplant) dish to accompany the pork and mango salsa simply by frying some chopped onion and chillies (with the seeds removed) in lots of olive oil, then adding the chopped aubergine and briefly frying it before adding salt, pepper, ground cumin and tumeric powder. it is really important to add lots of oil (i used olive oil because it IS very middle-eastern and lots of it is not unhealthy) because the aubergine will absorb quite a lot of the oil and needs it to fry through well. fry for about 10mins or so until you get most of the aubergine nicely browned/charred.