mango salad with barattiere and red pepper
served in a spicy lime and fish sauce dressing topped with roasted peanuts
What is a barattiere?
Barattiere is a vegetable very commonly grown around Puglia, Italy. I discovered it quite randomly last summer when browsing fresh ingredients while shopping and was pleasantly surprised by the flavour. The taste and texture remind me of something between a honeydew melon and an English cucumber.
The vegetable is refreshing with subtle sweet notes and hence, is ideal for hot summer days. It doesn’t need to be cooked and I like eating it on its own or incorporating it into salads.
If barattiere is not available where you live, I recommend a cucumber or a melon as a substitution - and to keep an eye out for a barattiere when you travel!
Mango salad with barattiere and red pepper salad served in a spicy lime and fish sauce dressing, topped with roasted peanuts
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
Base
250g mango (roughly a single mango, buy one that is quite firm and not too ripe)
100g barattiere (about half of a fruit)
60g red bell pepper (about half a pepper)
40g carrot (about half of a large carrot)
1 bird’s eye chilli
1/4 bunch coriander leaves
20g raw-in-shell peanuts
Sauce
20g fish sauce
50g lime juice
1 bird’s eye chilli
1 small garlic clove
10g coriander stems
2 tablespoons of white sugar
For serving
20g raw-in-shell peanuts
4 wedges of lime
Method
Peanuts
Set the oven to 170°C.
If you bought raw-in-shell peanuts, wash them first, drain and dry.
Lay the dried peanuts (in-shell) onto a baking tray laid with baking paper, ensuring they’re evenly spread in one layer.
Bake for around 20 minutes or until golden in colour. If you’re not sure if they’re ready: take one out, let it cool, crack the shell, remove the paper-like skin and give it a try. Once ready, take them all out and cool down. Again, get rid of the shell and the skin.
Place the peanuts in a ziplock bag, lay it flat and gently pound them with the end of a rolling pin. It’s up to you how big you want to have the pieces. I left mine as shown below.
Sauce
If you have a mortar and pestle:
Place a wet towel underneath the mortar to prevent it from moving.
Put an unpeeled garlic clove in a mortar and crush it with a pestle to loosen up the skin and remove it. Add the bird’s eye chilli, coriander stems and sugar into the vessel.
Pound the ingredients together into a coarse paste (pounding the ingredients releases flavour compounds and hence the sauce will be more flavourful and aromatic).
Add fish sauce and lime juice and mix until the sugar is dissolved. Taste and adjust the amount of lime juice and fish sauce to your liking.
If you don’t have a mortar: mince the garlic, thinly chop chilli and coriander stems and place them in a bowl with white sugar. Add fish sauce, squeeze lime juice and combine.
Fruits and vegetables
Before proceeding with the prep, ensure your knife is well-sharpened and your chopping board is properly stabilized. To prevent the board from sliding, dampen some paper towel and put it underneath the board.
Julienne 1/2 of a carrot, chop coriander leaves and thinly slice one bird’s eye chilli.
Remove the barattiere’s skin with a peeler and cut in half. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut the halves in half again. Place the halves cut side down and cut 1 cm slices. Cut the slices into matchsticks (some of the matchsticks will be longer than others as we removed the inside of the vegetable). Set aside.
Julienning mango can be a bit challenging because of the shape of the long and flat pit and the fact that the fruit is quite slippery. Prepping mangoes is a great way to practise your knife skills!
Cut off the top and the bottom of the mango. Remove the skin with a peeler.
Place the peeled fruit horizontally on the chopping board and slice off the first half (cut a bit further from the centre) along the pit trying to be as close as possible to the edge of the pit. Proceed with cutting the opposite lobe.
Cut the remaining flesh around the pit. If you have any more fruit left on the pit, cut it off to prevent wastage and have a snack. At this point, you’re left with two thick lobes and some trimmings.
Put a lobe flat side down, place your palm on the top of the round edge and carefully slice the lobe horizontally (you should get around 3 slices depending on the size of your mango). Cut the slices into matchsticks and repeat the process with the other lobe and the trimmings.
Cut the red bell pepper in half and remove the seeds and the white pith. Halve again into four quarters in total, and press each piece to the chopping board to flatten it out. With the skin side down, slice matchsticks then cut them crosswise in half if the strips are too long.
Serving
Place all the ingredients in a bowl (mango, red bell pepper, barattiere, carrots, chillis, coriander and peanuts). Add the sauce, and gently toss. Garnish with a wedge of lime on the side and sprinkle roasted peanuts over the salad.
