Beef & Mango Stir Fry - Dinner Review

Remember how I said a couple of days ago that I had spent much of the first 2 years of my life in Sub Saharan Africa?  Well while it may have taught me to hate milk, it fostered a rather obsessive love of 'exotic' fruit, mostly in the form of mangoes and physallis (my parents used to strip me, pop me in the bath and hand me a mango to munch on, and I once rather famously stripped the physallis bush of a Polish couple my parents were friends with, working my way round, opening the little Chinese Lanterns, and stealing the fruit inside).  When I found out that my friend Kirsten had a mango tree in her garden, I was a little jealous.  When I learned that she didn't really like them, I was insanely jealous!  Anywho, I thought I'd try her stir fry recipe using one I picked up in the supermarket:

Source: gemini-stitches.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

And here's what I made:

The Verdict:

Taste/Texture:

Alas, I was failed by my ingredients here.  I suspect that with a fresh off the tree mango in the Aussie sun, and with fresh mango juice, you get a lovely sweet and sour type stir fry, however you rarely pick up really sweet mangoes in Tesco (although the Indian shops in the West End get trays of rather luscious looking ones that I suspect are less sour).  Also, the only mango juice I could get was 'mango juice drink' which is basically very watered down mango juice.  Possibly the inclusion of a tin of sliced bamboo shoots for the veggie part of it didn't help either.  Anyway, I think I might need to try it at Kirsten's house next time ;o)

Substitutions:

I got a little confused by the ingredients in a couple of places, especially around the ginger, so I ended up sticking in about 1" of ginger root jullienned, along with 5 spring onions, as I happened to have a few to many and wanted to use them up.  As mentioned above, I also threw in a large tin of sliced bamboo shoots, and served mine on a small amount of buckwheat noodles rather than rice.  I actually mixed up the sesame oil and included it in the sauce rather than cooking in it (I used rapeseed oil for the frying part), and used Shaoxing rice wine instead of sherry, and rice vinegar for the vinegar.

Ease Of Preparation:

This was simple to prepare, but remember to have everything ready before you start stir frying (including the rice/noodles!)

Amount Made:

This would easily serve 4-6 depending on the amount of rice/noodles one used along with it.

Final Verdict:

I won't be making this myself again, but if Kirsten wants to invite me round for dinner...