Summer Fruit Juice

The large bags of green fruit hanging over the juice stand are the summer favourites, mangoes, which are just beginning to come into season. You can buy them in the fruit markets already, but they are still just a tiny bit green, though with the heat, this will change quickly. We have many varieties, some better for juice than others. My preference in mangoes is just to eat them. The brown fruit in the bags next to the mangoes are the fruit of the doum palm and I'm not sure that fruit is the right word for these objects. I bought a doum once and found myself with a hard brown thing that could be eaten in the same sense that a very old dog biscuit could be. It was dry, and had to be gnawed on. The flavour was a bit like a gingerbread cookie...the effort required to consume it was considerable and of dubious value as far as I could see. They are also soaked, macerated in a blender and strained for juice, which makes much more sense.