No-Cook Mango Mustard Sauce

There’s honestly not a lot I can say about this terrific mango mustard sauce. It takes less than ten minutes to throw together, and you can just use a fork to mash it up. The no-cook mango mustard sauce is sweet with a little kick, and goes perfectly as a dipping sauce with prawns, or, say, spicy chicken tenders.

So let’s talk about something else?

I like how paintings give us historical clues or raise historical questions, specifically when it comes to how people lived. AND WHAT THEY ATE.

Apparently, painting still life was something Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) did in his down-time. “When I am tired of doing figures (my predilection) I begin a still life that I finish without a model.” – Gauguin. Just goes to show that artists and accountants alike need hobbies 😂.

FUN FACT: Did you know that Gauguin was a stockbroker who lost his job in the crash of 1882 and turned to painting as an alternate career?

What I find interesting about this post-impressionist painting is that Gauguin painted it not as a study while IN the tropics, but after he’d returned to Paris from a six-month trip to the Caribbean. More on that here, which also talks about the composition, including how the top of the flower is cut off. I love the casual feel of this painting; how the mangoes, in degrees of ripeness, spill out of the bowl like eager children. The hibiscus seems to be looking down on them (sternly? tenderly?) from her goblet. Although it’s a still life, there’s so much action in the colours, composition and brushwork.

WHERE ARE WE GOING WITH THIS?

So the question is: were there actual mangoes and hibiscus in 1880s Paris for Gauguin to arrange on a table as a still life composition?? According to Sotheby’s: yes, mangoes were “easily found” in Paris marketplaces, and, yes, hibiscus in the hothouses. So, the answer is: YES, why did you bother to ask? 😂

It’s thought Gauguin painted Still Life with Mangoes and Hibiscus while staying with another artist, Émile Schuffenecker in the 14th arrondissement. Gauguin and Schuffenecker met when they were both stockbrokers (more stockbrokers!) and later became godfathers to each others’ sons. The year after this was painted, Gauguin went to stay with his buddy Vincent Van Gogh at Arles in France. All those impressionists and post-impressionists were bros (oh, and Mary Cassett and Berthe Morisot too).

I sincerely hope they all ate mangoes.

“The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.”

-Paul Gauguin