Fresh Mango Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

Choose mangos that are fragrant and yield slightly to pressure. The salsa is also delicious with grilled chicken or fish. Pineapple or peaches can substitute for mango. The cinnamon chips are addictive on their own - make extra.

Mango salsa represents the flavor logic of Mexico's tropical Pacific coast, where fresh mangoes have been cultivated since the fruit was introduced from South Asia by Portuguese and Spanish traders in the 16th century. The mango (Mangifera indica), native to South Asia and Southeast Asia, arrived in the Americas during the colonial era and found a natural home in the tropical climates of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Mexican cuisine had a preexisting tradition of fruit-based salsas — preparations combining fresh fruit with chili, citrus, and salt — that dates to the pre-Columbian period, when indigenous communities along the Pacific coast made similar preparations with native fruits. American restaurant culture encountered fruit salsa in a more composed form during the 1980s and 1990s as California nouvelle cuisine and Southwestern cuisine — both influential food movements of that era — brought tropical and Latin American flavors into fine-dining menus. By the mid-1990s, jarred mango salsa appeared on American grocery store shelves alongside the tomatillo and tomato varieties, signaling its arrival as a mainstream product. The sweet-heat dynamic at the core of mango salsa — ripe fruit tempered by jalapeño or habanero — is a flavor combination found in cuisines across Latin America and Southeast Asia, suggesting a nearly universal human preference for contrasting sweetness and heat.