“I use mature green and turning-yellow mangoes. Peel and cut into chunks. I add 1 or 2 Tbsp. of lemon juice, cover and simmer over low heat for a few minutes. Do not cook until soft.”
So begins my mother’s mango chutney recipe. She made chutney as long as I can remember, at least as long as the trees planted in our back yard when my sister and I were born produced fruit.
My mother had studied and later taught Home Economics and food and nutrition at the University of Hawaii before WWII, and applied everything she had learned to the production of the perfect chutney.
I thought the recipe was somewhere in a box in storage along with her old recipe book. I can visualize packing that box with the intention of someday returning to copy and post her recipes.
But it seems my sister pulled the chutney recipe out and set it aside, and it never made it into storage. Luckily, yesterday I found it in a stack of wholly unrelated papers in Bonnie’s apartment. It’s one of those reasons it has taken me so long to go through all of our family’s accumulated papers, still an ongoing task.
In any case, here’s the recipe, along with notes about changed proportions my mother made over the years.
Click here to see Helen’s Mango Chutney recipe.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is Gold!! Than you Ian for sharing. My mom makes a mean chutney and follows Maile Yardley’s recipe. I am going to show her your mom’s version. I think she will appreciate cooking the mangoes ahead and combining later.
I have vivid memories of cruising Kapahulu for green mangoes. My mom would pull over and tell me to go knock on so and so’s door to ask for green mangoes. And then there was the horrible chille pepper picking episode, where it went from my hands to my nose to my eyes. I was in misery for several hours. I was 10 years old and have worn gloves ever since.