Whenever I look at the calendar on my wall, I always find myself shocked that it’s already August. Summer is nearly over, and for most of my friends (and my younger brother), school is starting in a matter of days. Not weeks or months—days.
The feeling of a waning summer hasn’t really set in for me yet, mostly because Stanford University, where I’ll be an incoming freshman this school year, follows the quarter system, so my move-in date isn’t until mid-September! (The flip side, of course, is that I’ll be taking midterms in May while everyone else is beginning their summer breaks.)
It really has felt like an eternal summer for me. But even though the days have been getting shorter (technically) and everyone has been buzzing about going back to school, the mangoes are still sweet—summer must still be going in full force.
Sweet mangoes have always reminded me of summer. My fondest childhood memories of the summertime were always me in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. When my maternal grandparents used to live there, my family and I would frequently come to visit for months at a time, and that always meant hours and hours of playing with my endless array of Pokémon figures I used to collect and eating sweet, juicy, freshly cut mangoes.
My grandma, peeling a mango core.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve been to the Philippines—over six years—but now that my grandma lives in Tuguegarao City in northern Luzon, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to relive the nostalgia of cartoon reruns, summer mangoes, and a warm breeze coming in from the balcony.
Even though I haven’t been able to go back to my birth country in a really long time, my grandma has been coming to see me on a yearly basis. This summer was no different. Since she stays in Dallas for months at a time, it normally never feels like her trip was too short, but this time it flew by. Because my eight-week summer internship overlapped with most of the time my grandma was in Dallas, it really felt like she wasn’t here for all that long.
Luckily, before she left, I shared this mango sago recipe with her, and we decided to take advantage of the sweet, summer mangoes. Mango sago, a well-loved Asian summer dessert, came to the Philippines by way of Hong Kong. Its sweet flavor was supposed to make you feel cool and refreshed after eating it, which is very much needed in the tropical summers of East and Southeast Asia! It’s fairly easy to make, and it’s a great way to celebrate the end of summer. Enjoy!
Mango Sago
A sweet Asian dessert perfect for the end of summer.
Adapted from yummy.ph
Ingredients
- 3 mangoes
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup sweetened condensed coconut milk
- 1/2 cup organic granulated tapioca
Directions
- Slice the mangoes into 3 parts—the sides that you can eat are the “cheeks” while the middle portion is the “core.”
- Don’t waste the mango core! Scrape as much of the edible parts of the mango cores and reserve in a small bowl.
- Dice the remaining 6 mango cheeks and set aside.
- In a blender, add the scraped mango cores, milk, and sweetened condensed coconut milk. Blend until smooth.
- Pour the blended mixture into a small saucepan. Add 1/2 cup tapioca. Stir on low heat until the tapioca becomes transparent.
- Before serving, let cool and add the diced mangoes as garnish.
