When I lived in downtown Baltimore, a French café across the street from my apartment served one of my favorite salads ever: grilled chicken, fresh mango, tomatoes, and avocado served on a bed of Boston globe lettuce. The combination of ingredients was simple yet genius. Despite missing this salad very much after leaving Baltimore, I never tried recreating it myself until I read a recent issue of Milk Street. Their recipe for “Senegalese Avocado and Mango Salad” zeros in on the flavor champions from my favored salad—sweet mango, creamy avocado, juicy tomatoes—and combines it with a tart, spicy, salty dressing. Instant fruit salad crack…because, yeah, without the lettuce and chicken, this is basically a savory fruit salad.
Anyway, I can’t recommend this recipe enough. I’ve made the salad dressing three times in the last month, and this recipe makes a lot of dressing. Just a few notes before you dive in:
- Milk Street had complicated instructions that involved slicing and tossing the salad ingredients in separate batches before combining them. I find it easier (and still incredibly tasty) to just roughly chop my mangos, grape tomatoes, and avocados into bite size chunks and mix them all together with the dressing.
- And (once again, despite Milk Street’s cautions) because of the lime juice in the dressing, the mango and avocados keep very well in the fridge even when prepped far in advance. Because there’s no lettuce in this version (although I’m sure you could add some), and thus no need to worry about wilted greens, I actually think this would make an awesome picnic salad.
- The original version of this recipe uses roasted peanut oil—if you have some, try it out and let me know how it tastes.
- Omnivores: Turn this filling salad into a meal by mixing in shredded grilled chicken breast.
- Make sure your mangos are ripe. The salad will be really sour if you use unripe/green mangos.
Mango, Avocado, and Tomato Salad: Recipe Review
Ingredients
- 1 bunch parsley, largest stems removed and roughly chopped
- 2 cloves garlic
- 4 scallions, roughly chopped
- 1 habanero pepper, stem and seeds removed
- ¼ cup lime juice (about 2 limes’ worth of juice)
- 1 tsp lime zest (about 1 limes’ worth of zest)
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp ground black pepper
- 2 ripe avocados, diced into ¾ inch cubes
- 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
- 3 ripe mangos, diced into ¾ inch cubes
Instructions
- Pulse parsley, garlic, scallions, habanero pepper, salt, and black pepper together in food processor until finely chopped, until it looks like a dry pesto.
- Add lime juice, lime zest, and extra virgin olive oil and pulse until reaching the consistency of a thick ranch dressing.
- Dress your salad: Start by tossing ¼ cup of dressing with chopped tomato, mango, and avocado, continue adding more dressing to taste as desired. There should be plenty of dressing left over to pour on grilled chicken (or make more salad).