Ulog #235: Mango Salsa

One of my favorite things about cooking is that you can experiment with almost anything and the creations of different type of ingredients can produce an endless amount of variations to flavors.

Recently I was hit with inspiration of something I tried back at my wife's hometown in East Malaysia, Kuching, called 'Mango Duck'. It's a Chinese dish that made a huge impression on me of which I have forgotten even what it taste like except for the fact that I remembered it was super delicious.

I had an idea to use similar ingredients like the 2 main components of duck and mango to make it into a burger and that's how I created my food truck's special; Duck Confit Mango Burger.

The ingredients I used for the mango salsa were riped mangoes, jalapeno, red onions and some lime juice. For 2 mangoes, I went with 1 onion and 2 fairly small jalapeno and a juice of a lime. I didn't add any salt to this as I wanted the sweetness to really shine through.

After doing this and trying the combinations in a burger, I felt the burger still lacked the mango sweetness so I then had the idea to make a chutney or jam if you'd say.

For the chutney I used 1 mango, 2 tablespoons of sugar and some water along with a curry powder mixture that consist of tumeric, cloves, cardamom, coriander powder, cumin powder, and fenugreek; cooking it over the stove until the are soft enough to mash.

After it's cooled down, I put them into a glass jar and into the fridge. There you have it, a mango chutney.

So for the burger, a spread of mango chutney on the bottom bun, the confit duck, some smokey barbecue sauce, and lastly the mango salsa all sandwiched with the top bun.

It was superb. The duck with a gamey flavor yet tender and still with a bit of bite to it with a really good sweet and sour complement from the salsa and chutney made it a well balanced burger; what a burger essentially is.

This burger was a special so I don't know when I'll make it again but definitely not gonna be the last time I make a mango salsa.

Hope you get some ideas to pair this mango salsa :D

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