Mango Bango {Vegan!}

An easy and delicious Filipino dessert with mango and coconut water as the stars…

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When this month’s theme for the Shh Cooking Secretly Challenge was declared as “Vegan Recipes” as suggested by Radha, I had to do it. Once upon a time, I had to turn vegan for half a year for medication purpose and I took advantage of it to create a little database of vegan eats and bakes. It’s been a long time since I have tried making something exclusively vegan and this challenge was a good excuse to do so. In this challenge, we are paired with a fellow blogger, who gives us two ingredients to be used in the dish that we plan to cook, and viceversa. I am paired with Priya Iyer, who is a very versatile food blogger. We had a little discussion and while I gave her coconut and curry leaves – with which she made this droolworthy Kuzhambu, she gave me coconut milk and sugar, just apt to make the Mango Bango.

From what I could gather, Mango Bango is a super easy Filipino dessert which includes mango and palm fruit along with some coconut bites, mixed together in a creamy sweet milky sauce. There are variations depending on family recipes but mango and nata de coco – which is a type of coconut jelly, was a part of most of the recipes. The sauce is usually a mix of milk, cream and condensed milk, which I substituted with thick coconut milk to make the whole recipe vegan. Some recipes use sago and some don’t, but since I love sago, I decided to go with it. Hehe…

Though the dessert is simple, it takes its own time. I made coconut jelly from coconut water and agar agar, since I couldn’t trace nata de coco here, but I love working with agar agar and it hardly took time for the jelly to get done. All you need to do is melt the agar agar, add the coconut water in room temperature and just heat till it looks all homogenous. Pour into a pan and let it set in room temperature. Meanwhile, the sago pearls can be cooked and drained. I had a little mishap where my pan flipped off the stove and it almost landed on Rasha’s leg, who was washing dishes in the sink. Alhamdulillah for her reflexes, half of it went on my kitchen carpet and nothing on her legs. And I had some sago to use in my final dish. Hehe… Then chop the mangoes – I used the Yemeni mangoes which are in the market, very chunky but not that sweet, cut the jelly and add in, toss in all the ingredients and just allow it to rest. The beauty of this dessert is that you can have it thick as we liked it or a little watery as well, so there is no wrong way of making it. Next time, if I get my hands on palm fruit, I would love to add them in too. Off to this simple recipe…

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5 from 10 votes

Mango Bango {Vegan!}

Course Dessert

Cuisine Far Eastern

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Servings 4

Author Rafeeda AR

Ingredients

• 10 gm agar agar/ china grass
• 500 ml coconut water with bites
• 1/4 cup sago pearls
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 1/3 cup sugar more as needed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• A pinch of salt
• 2 mangoes chopped

Instructions

• Soak the agar agar in half cup of water for 15 minutes.
• Cook on low flame till the agar agar melts completely. Add the coconut water and stir. Just cook till warm.
• Pour into a shallow dish and set aside for an hour to solidify.
• In another saucepan, boil the sago pearls in 3 cups of water till it becomes transparent and cooked.
• Drain, wash to remove the starch and empty into a mixing bowl.
• Chop the mangoes and add into the sago pearls.
• Add the coconut milk, sugar, salt and vanilla.
• Cut the set coconut water jelly into squares and add into the bowl. Toss all of them together.
• Allow it to cool in the fridge for an hour or till the time of serving.

Notes

You do not need to chill the coconut water jelly. Just keep it out and it will set in an hours time. 

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