Author’s Note:Total credit for this recipe goes to my uncle Raja, who made this for me this weekend. I merely duplicated the effort earlier today with a few of my own touches.
Nothing cools a burning mouth after a meal of spicy Indian food like a lassi, a traditional sweet or salty yogurt drink, but nothing completes an Indian meal like a mango lassi. It’s a sublime combination of sweet and tangy that cajoles as it cools.
Now most recipes I’ve seen online use a mix of yogurt and milk, but this recipe uses kefir — the favored fermented yogurt drink of Eastern Europe/Caucusus — and the result is magnificent. Best of all, this recipe is simple and only takes about 10 minutes to prepare.
Here’s what you need: 2-3 large mangoes (the riper, the better), a bottle of kefir, ground cardamom, honey
Here’s what you do: Peel and cube the mangoes. I found that a vegetable peeler did the trick. Drop them into a blender. Add the kefir slowly (I’d start off with half the bottle, then add more depending on how mango-y you want your lassi). Blend away. Add more kefir if you want a less juicy and more creamy texture to the lassi. Depending on the sourness of the mangoes, add between 1 to 3 tablespoons of honey. The ones I used today were incredibly sweet, so I only needed one. Add a teaspoon of ground cardamom. Blend until smooth. Serve over ice and drink it after a spicy meal!
The lassi I made today tasted great, but the mangoes had a lot of stringy flesh that I couldn’t quite strain out. If you don’t mind picking your teeth after every sip, it’s not too bad, but it can be annoying. If that puts you off, you could blend the mangoes by themselves and then strain the juice to get rid of the stringy bits before adding the kefir. That will, however, add a few steps to the process.
