I try to ensure that the fruit and veg we eat at home have wellie miles rather than airmiles. But there will always be stuff that can't be grown in the polytunnel. Bananas and mangoes, for example, are a bit beyond me, but I gather that Bob Flowerdew, the impeccably named organic-gardening guru, grows both under cover in Norfolk.
Alphonso mangoes are in season just now. It's a tribute to our multiculturalism that you can buy such things in Ireland; you can even get them in Tesco. Alphonso mangoes are small, about the size of a modest lemon, and they are yellow. The flesh is deep orange, very juicy and exceptionally fragrant. The late Alan Davidson, in his magisterial Oxford Companion to Food, describes the scent as being "resinous", but that doesn't really do it justice.
Preparing a mango for eating is not easy if you have not seen it done. You need to separate the flesh from the large stone by cutting it away, with the skin intact, into two halves. Then score the flesh by cutting into it horizontally and vertically and turn each half inside out to reveal little cubes of mango that can then be cut into a bowl.
I eat Alphonso mangoes with yogurt for breakfast, and they have an amazing affinity with rhubarb, which is also in season. One simple idea is to make a rhubarb fool (stew some, sweeten it and fold it into lots of whipped cream; I used to think it was called "fool" because it's so easy, but apparently it comes from the French fouler, to mash). Serve the mango cubes on top.