Mango brown sugar rum jam. Need I say more?

 

Homemade jam is always the way to go. Mangoes have a special place in my heart anyway, so I’m pretty much always going to say yes to them, in any way shape or form. The brown sugar in Panama and most other Latin American countries leaves absolutely nothing to be desired: it’s called raspadura, and it hasn’t been processed to high heaven, so there’s a molasses flavor to it, and so much of the syrup that comes from the cane that it’s extracted from that it holds itself together. (I don’t actually know if that’s true, but I think that’s the case. At any rate, once you’ve started eating raspadura, there’s no going back. White sugar tastes like plastic.)

Add a little bit of rum and you’ve got a perfect tropical near-the-equator jam, at least when Candice makes it. Here's her description: 

Mango Jam with Brown Sugar and Rum: Organic Mangoes.  Slightly chunky!  Great as a pie filling or on french toast and ice cream!   Use within 2 weeks or freeze.

 So, what do you do with it?

Well, I found that once I popped open the jar I couldn’t wait long enough to go get ingredients to make anything more involved, although I instantly had a ton of ideas of what it would be good with. Instead, I ate it on toasted yucca bread from one of the local bakeries. Yucca is a tuber that I most often see as either a potato-like mash or as fries here, but the yucca bread at Ceiba bakery has this crunchy sweet crust on the top, and it’s soft and squishy and just what you’re not supposed to like anymore in this day and age of whole wheat bread. I should have made it into French Toast, but like I said I was impatient, so I just toasted the bread and slathered it in jam. I had accidentally squished it on the way home, so it doesn’t look near as pretty as it could, but there you have it:

But as soon as I had eaten my way into a stupor, finishing the bread and most of the jam, I was finally able to think about other options for this delectable goodness. Here’s a short list:

• On French Toast or waffles, with whipped cream and toasted pecans
• Wrapped in a crepe with ricotta or mascarpone cheese
• Served on a cheese platter, with aged queso manchego or other hard aged cheeses
• On buttermilk biscuits
• Inside a scone, like the ones they sell a the county fair
• And I’m going to go out on a limb here, but it would probably be pretty tasty with cornbread with bacon in it. No? Fine. I didn’t want to share with you anyway.
• It would be great warm on vanilla ice cream, and as a glaze on the top of a tart. And you know what? It would probably be absolutely disgustingly amazing baked onto pork tenderloin medallions with cilantro. Just sayin.