Fresh mangosteens are a rare sight even at Southeast Asian groceries in Chicago. Imports of irradiated fresh mangosteens from Thailand have only recently been approved by the USDA, but they’re still far from common. Aside from being seasonal (try your luck around springtime), they seem to fly off the shelves as soon as they’re available.
When a case of pre-bagged fresh mangosteens was unloaded in front of me, a few people dropped what they were doing and headed straight for it. In the time it took to realize that there was a pile of fresh mangosteens right under my nose, a few bags were taken. I thought they were plums. I quickly grab a bag as more of an instinctive reaction but almost threw it back when I noticed the words “plant quarantine” on the label. It’s not the most inviting thing to find on anything I plan to ingest.
None of the mangosteens sported the distinctive green caps. I wonder if irradiation causes the caps to flake off.
The best way to enjoy this fruit is to eat it straight from the husk but I couldn’t help but think that there must be something I could do with it. A quick search for “mangosteen recipe” pointed to a Thai recipe for mangosteen clafoutis. Looking at this list, I had a gut feeling that guys aren’t supposed to make clafoutis so I keep looking. Whatever I’m making will likely be Thai, so I looked up recipes in David Thompson’s Thai Food, a.k.a. the tome of weird transliterations and impossible-to-find-ingredients (even more so now that Thai Grocery is gone).
