Sunday, April 24, 2005

Frozen Mango Lassi Recipe

I just wrote about a Hong Kong style mango dessert, but when I heard the next "Is My Blog Burning" was themed Orange your hungry? all I could think of was "I MUST come up with a mango recipe." I thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to fixate on mangoes.

In general I like mangoes uncooked. They are terrific with Thai style sticky rice, as a filling in crepes, in fruit salad, in a salsa and also in mango lassi. Lassi is an Indian beverage made from yogurt or buttermilk, and water. It can be sweet or salty and is a great thing to drink with spicy food. Mango lassi is a sweet drink, flavored with mango puree.

It occurred to me that mango lassi is so cool and refreshing, what about chilling it down even further to the point of freezing it? When I was growing up we used to make a dessert of pureed frozen bananas, so why not mangoes? I always like to find a recipe that only has two or three ingredients but tastes like heaven. Mashed potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and even s'mores fall into this category for me. So now I give you another three ingredient recipe, brought to you by the color orange:

Note: This would be great for dessert after an Indian dinner, but it's also healthy enough to eat for breakfast.

Frozen Mango Lassi
2 servings


1 medium mango
1/2 cup buttermilk or yogurt
honey to taste


Cut up the mango into chunks and freeze. Pour the buttermilk or yogurt into ice cube trays or a very shallow container to freeze. When solid, take mango and buttermilk or yogurt cubes and place in the food processor, blend until creamy. Taste and add honey to sweeten if necessary. Scoop with an ice cream scoop and serve immediately.