Mange-tout peas are undeveloped peas where the pod is eaten as well.
Mango ginger is a rhizome of the ginger family which smells of unripe mangoes. It is used in salads or cooked in coconut milk.
Mango powder is a very sour flavouring agent with a slightly fruit flavour made from dried under-ripe mangoes, rather similar to tamarind in cooking.
Chayote. Custard marrow. A Central American food plant, it is a bulbous, pear-shaped gourd which grows on a vine, with pale green, ridged skin and about the size of an avocado. It is a bland vegetable, somewhat like a cucumber in flavour, with a little spice when fresh. It should be treated in the same way as vegetable marrow or aubergine (US: eggplant) and, like them, should be cooked before eating. In Mexico it is often diced or sliced and then steamed or poached, after which it is added to soups or salads, though it may be served as an accompaniment to meat dishes or as a dessert. Leaves and shoots are also edible when young.
The mangosteen is a lychee-like fruit with white, segmented flesh surrounded by a hard purplish skin. This round fruit has four well-defined sepals.
The mud crab or mangrove crab is a type of swimming crab found around the northern coasts of tropical Australia and making very good eating. It is found in the muddy bottoms around mangroves in estuaries and shallow bays. Only males are fished, usually using pots. They make very good eating indeed, although we found their musculature completely different from European crabs, with the meat not lifiting from the claws or from the carapace in a single succulent mouthful, but very flaky, requiring a great deal of thorough scraping to get at it. It is definitely worth the trouble as the flesh is remarkably sweet and well-flavoured. The colour of mud crabs will vary, as Denis Christie in Sydney Fish Market told me, depending on whether they have been caught in a sandy or muddy environments, those from mud being darker and greener. They are kept bound up when sold live, as they most frequently are, to prevent injury to other crabs. This crab, like so many others, has in the past been known as the black, brown of green crab, as well as the giant mud crab and, in error, the orange mud crab. When asked if he was going anywhere for his holidays, Stewart, one of the guides at the Bloomfield Lodge in Weary Bay in Northern Queensland replied that he was just going to stay put and fish a few mud crabs. A happy man.
Giant river turtle or mangrove terrapin, which lives in the rivers of South East Asia. Its eggs were considered a delicacy which has reduced numbers in the wild to critically endangered levels.
Said to have been invented by Supreme Court Judge Charles Henry Truax around 1890 when he was President of New York's Manhattan Club. In fact, it seems, it was not him. His doctor ordered him to stop drinking Martinis for his health and, particularly, his weight. He 'ordered' the bartender to invent an alternative, which, by the way, did not work. It should contain 60 ml (2 fl oz) blended American Rye or Bourbon whisky, 30 ml (1 fl oz) sweet Italian vermouth (Cinzano), a dash of Angostura bitters and a stemmed Maraschino cherry. These should be combined in a cocktail mixer to which 2-3 large cubes of ice are added to cool it rapidly but not dilute it. The ingredients are then stirred and poured into a stemmed cocktail glass. Add the cherry.
The Manila clam, called ‘Japanese clam’ in many languages, is a small variety of Pacific clam with a brown and white shell. It is about 6 cm (around 2 inches) across and very sweet.
