H is for Hilaw, Perfectly Unripe

Slice, dice, serve with salty-savory bagoong (shrimp paste). Knockout!

Have you ever tried a slice of green mango? I don't mean a sour-sweet yellow-green mango. Or a green-skinned mango that is secretly ripe and bursting with golden juice.

I mean really green - green as bright macaw wings, so green that the flesh is dense, smooth as wax.This is a green that is so powerful, a single bite squeezes your eyes tight and puts legions of Sour Patch Kids to shame. Have you tasted that shade of green? Its unbearable, its a nearly perfect degree of hilaw - unripe.

The word "unripe" might have a negative connotation in the States, like something unfinished and picked before its prime. But uses of the hilaw are woven throughout Filipino cooking. My memories are laced with the warm steam of tinola, tender chicken simmered with onions, unripe papaya, and ginger. My hands remember picking guavas by the old Honoka'a cemetery, plucking some that were a melting shade of pink, and others pale-green and used to sour broths.

"Hilaw pa," I remember hearing my father say, as he tapped the bottom of a too-young jackfruit, listening for a hollow sound, his face intent as a water-dowser in the desert. '"Hilaw pa," I now say to myself while trolling local grocery markets, poking my fingers at a still-firm peach or plum.

I have yet to figure out what is a locally grown version of the unripe fruit turned savory, besides the green tomato that just asks to be breaded and fried. Any ideas?