You can call it a mango lassi or a mango smoothie, the name doesn’t matter. Mango lassis and mango smoothies beat every other lassi and smoothie hands down. Duh. Mango: the king of fruits.
Of course you’ll find conflicting opinions because mango lassi recipes vary from household to household just like mango smoothies. Take a look at what a lassi is and what a smoothie is and decide for yourself. In the both of them, there’s yogurt (lassi uses the natural kind called curds), and there’s mango (or any other fruit pulp), so there you go.
Mangoes always take me back to my childhood. Slow and idyllic summer days when we’d dig a hole around the stalk with our nails and force the pulp out through that hole. We’d get a little out before the hole got bigger and more pulp came out. We’d have mango all over our faces, on our clothes, but we’d just keep eating it without a care in the world. I’d do that for hours. Oh, well.
India loves mangoes and mangoes love India. There are more than two dozen varieties — this article lists them — here, and each region pickles it, makes a drink out of it, and cooks it differently. Sooooo much mango. It’s gooood. Life’s gooood when you eat mangoes and drink mangoes! Gooood. Like the way Jim Carey says it in Bruce Almighty.
Oh, and the mango is from our garden. I don’t know the name of the variety though, and I think it is a hybrid. It’s quite long, very sweet when ripe, and you can peel off the skin from the flesh (so cutting it for the mango lassi is quite easy). I’ve put up the picture, so if you know, do let me know.
For me, next to eating the entire fruit without cutting it open (in the way I’ve mentioned above), I like mango lassi: the king of all lassis. Cold, mango lassi. So tropical, so summery. And gooood! Let’s get to it shall we? You’ll only need 5 ingredients, a blender and a jug for yourself if you aren’t sharing.
- 1 big ripe mango (you'll get 1 and 1/2 cups of roughly chopped mango)
- 1 cup thick curds or thick natural yogurt
- 1 cup milk
- 2 cardamom pods or 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 2 and 1/2 tablespoons sugar (or brown sugar or jaggery or honey) or more, depending on the sweetness of the mango
- 3/4 cup crushed ice
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Keep your glasses in the fridge while you make the lassi.
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Crush the cardamom pods, remove the husk and pound away at the seeds until it is a powder.
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Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend till smooth.
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Serving: Drink it the same day; let it chill in the fridge if you want to drink it later in the day. Do not keep it for the next day.
Related Links:
Mango, the king of fruits is here (The Times of India)
Lassi (Wikipedia)
Smoothie (Wikipedia)