Smoky Pepper Jelly–Mango Jam

To dismantle a mango, my mom would always shear off the sides first—navigating unerringly around the invisible seed—then score crisscrossing diagonals into the flesh. She’d hand me a half and I’d get to do the magic part, where you flip the mango inside out and find perfect cubes, fanned out like a hedgehog’s quills. I’d eat them straight off the peel. If we got to the mangoes too late and they were overripe, my mom would boil the pulp with some sugar to make us mango jam, perfect on butter