Mouth watering mango dishes

Bazar. Here is being held the summer festival of mangoes keeping in mind the ripening fruit on the boughs of the trees. This season of squalls, tornadoes, gusts, black skies and bright overwhelming lightning is the time to enjoy mango with all its richness and variations.

Imtiaz Siddiqui of Sonargaon says, "The purpose of the festival is to promote our local culture of the land where the hotel is situated. Food is an integral part of our society and seasonal fruits is a part of that. As mango is a major fruit item of Bangladesh, we've decided to promote this by having main entries, appetizers and desserts all made from mangos and sold at a special low price. The dishes are made for the menu for 15 days only begining, from July 1. The dishes are 30% lower than normal range."

The menu for the occasion includes beef tenderloin with mango sauce (served with mango fried rice and vegetable), stuffed chicken breast filled with mango (served with light cream sauce), sauteed king prawn with mango and fruit salsa, spaghetti with mango and baby shrimp(sauteed spaghetti with cream sauce and cheese baked), seafood salad with mango in cucumber ring, mango prawn cocktail (served with mango cocktail sauce), smoked chicken and mango fan (served with pistachio and pine nut vinaigrette dressing). In the dessert offers are included the mango mirror cake, mango tartlets, mango surprise and mango ice cream.

"We chose mangoes," says Siddiqui as this is the season of mangoes. We have been having this festival for the last six years. The flavours that we get in Fazli, Lengra and Heemsagars are not found everywhere and we want our foreign guests to flavour them. Our mango menu is replete with mango dishes so that even if there are those who have only salad and desert can taste the mango flavour. We had a special supply brought from Rajshahi. You have come in the afternoon when the guests are busy with their work in the city but if you come in the evening or night the room guests and local Dhaka clientele come with their friends and families or even to have a business dinner. Thus we have a very good response to our effort.

"Apart from this we have had Bangladesh Food Festival, Singapore Food Festival, Malaysian Food Festival etc. The selection of the food is done by the Director of Food and Beverage and Executive Chef. The recipes are specially made by the Executive Chef Marc Chaub and are a combination of the east and west taste. Ripe mangoes have been used in the main dishes and this is perhaps not usually done in the east. The Pan Pacific hotels all over the world are different from each other. The company feels that the hotels should promote the vision of the culture of the country where the hotel is located."