Mango Lassi

One thing that I love about cooking, eating and the internet is that I feel like I'm transported around the world every time that I cook or eat something new.  It's like the ultimate budget vacation.

According to my coworkers in Bangalore, it is the very essence of hot right now, and the only thing that will do is a cold bath and cold drink.  The beverage of choice seems to be Mango Lassi (or beer, but I'm not about to try and attempt Indian brewing practices).

Sweet, refreshing, delicious Mango Lassi is perfect for a hot day.

While its not as hot here in Raleigh as it is in Bangalore, its hot enough for me to crave a cold beverage after a run, and in honor of my Indian Food theme week, I decided to attempt my first homemade mango lassi. 

The recipe that I started with was this one from Cooking with SJ.  She is an Indian Blogger who I've been following for some time now.  Everybody should go visit her site, because her food is the best.  I should have featured more of her recipes this week, but I would never adapt the main dishes.  They are just to good.  This is the only recipe that I would dare to tamper with and mainly because I understand the joy of ice!

The first time I tried mango lassi was at the World Street Kitchen Food Truck in Minneapolis (or the food truck as my coworkers called it, as if there was never another worth considering).  It was a hot day, and we stood in line on hot asphalt in business attire for about 30 minutes before ordering.  While I almost always drink water with meals (particularly meals out), this was the world's easiest upsell. I got the Mango Lassi with my meal, and at the time it felt like the best $4.00 I had ever spent.

Mango lassi is extremely sweet and creamy and has a surprisingly aromatic flavor (it turns out this comes from the cardamom). On a hot day, nothing refreshes as well as this does.  One thing that is important to note is that I would classify Mango Lassi as a drink not a smoothie, but it is blended and it does contain fruit and dairy, but it has a much more liquidy and less wholesome quality to it.

Another important thing to note is the blend time.  I said two minutes with an immersion blender.  You might have one of those $14,000 blenders that also prepares meals and changes your child's diaper.  In that case just a few seconds will do, but mangos are very fibrous fruits, and a mango lassi is creamy not granular, and you don't want little bits of fiber killing your joy.  

The only bad thing about Mango Lassi is that you will find your drink is gone before you want it to be as you can see in the picture below.

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Mango Lassi

by Hannah Rounds May-8-2014

Mango Lassi is a perfect beverage to cool you down at the end of a long hot summer day

Ingredients

• 1 Very Ripe Mango- Diced
• 1-3 Tablespoons (depending on your preference) Sugar
• 3/4 Cup Plain Yogurt
• 1/4 Cup Milk or Water
• 4-5 Cubes Ice
• Pinch Cardamom

Instructions

1. Blend milk, yogurt and ice until ice is crushed (about 30 seconds)2. Add mango, sugar and cardamom and blend until smooth (about 2 minutes)

Details

Prep time: 3 mins Cook time: 2 mins Total time: 5 mins Yield: 1 Generous Serving