Mango Lassi: A Gift from Summer

Mango has always tasted like summer to me. Some of my favourite memories of Sri Lanka are of sitting around my grandparents’ dining table, eating green mangoes and drinking cold mango lassi. Our Mango Sea Moss Gel was made with those summers in mind and this recipe feels like a small way of returning to them.

From what I can recall of my childhood summers in Sri Lanka, the heat from July through to August was especially merciless. By three o’clock, the sun had worked itself into everything. The walls, the roof, the rooms of the house. The dining room was usually our only refuge from the heat.

The ceiling fan spun above us while my grandparents cut mangoes into pieces and set them on a plate between us. We would reach across one another for the best ones. Soft, gold crescent-shaped pieces that looked as though they might collapse before they reached your mouth. Beside them were tall glasses of cold mango lassi, condensation running down the outside of the glasses and gathering in little silver rings on the table.Someone would take a sip, put the glass down, eat a piece of mango and announce how good it all was. Someone else would agree.

Yummy. Very yummy. Another sip. Still yummy.

Looking back now its especially funny, how children don’t know when something ordinary is becoming sacred and a tradition of sorts.

Juice ran down our wrists and stained our white tank tops, the only tops my sister and I could bear to wear in the heat. Mangoes have never been particularly concerned with good manners, perhaps that is what I love most about them.

Later, we would take our glasses outside to the front porch and sit on the plastic lawn chairs and watch the sunset. This time of day in Sri Lanka is one I’ve never quite learned how to describe. Just before sunset, after the afternoon has spent hours pressing its heat against everything within its reach.

Then something gives.

A cool breeze moves through. The curtains breathe again. The whole house seems to exhale. The air becomes lighter somehow. It carries the smell of cinnamon and smoke from dry leaves burning in someone’s backyard, somewhere beyond the house. Sometimes, in the distance, you could hear the bread man making his afternoon rounds, a familiar sound travelling down the road long before you ever saw him.

And there we would sit, mango lassi in hand, while the last of the day softened around us. Discussing what we would have for dinner. The day that had been so loud with heat became gentle.

Across South Asia, mango belongs to a thousand different memories. And somewhere among them is lassi.

Hailing from the Indian subcontinent, with deep roots in Punjab, lassi is traditionally made from yoghurt or curd loosened into something you can drink. Sometimes savoury, sometimes sweet. The sort of drink that seems to have made an old agreement with the heat.

As a Sri Lankan, mango lassi is not a culinary tradition I can claim as my own. But it is a part of my memories. Not everything we love originates at our own table. Recipes travel, and somewhere along the way certain foods enter the architecture of a childhood and stay there.

Years later, you taste them and suddenly you are a child again. Your grandparents are at the table.

There is mango on the plate. The curtains are moving. Somebody is burning dry leaves nearby. The bread man is coming down the road and, for a second, impossibly, the evening has not ended yet.

And the mango lassi is still very, very yummy.

My Mango Lassi

This is the SOM OSU version.

Cold, thick and golden. Ripe mango with its sweetness and perfume, yoghurt with its quiet sourness, cardamom and cinnamon sitting somewhere in the background.

And a spoonful of our Mango Sea Moss Gel, disappearing beautifully into the yoghurt and fruit, adding body and thickness without asking the drink to become something it isn't.

There really is no reason to reinvent a mango lassi. There is only the pleasure of making one.

And this is one of my favourite ways to use our Mango Sea Moss Gel, folded into something I loved long before SOM OSU existed.

Ingredients

Serves 2

• 1 large, very ripe mango, peeled and roughly chopped

• 1 cup thick plain or Greek yoghurt

• ½ cup cold milk, plus more as needed

• 1–2 tablespoons SOM OSU Mango Sea Moss Gel

• A small pinch of ground cardamom

• A small pinch of ground cinnamon

• A small pinch of turmeric

• A handful of ice

• 2 dates, chopped, optional

• Honey, optional

Method

Add the mango, yoghurt, milk, Mango Sea Moss Gel, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric, dates if using, and ice to a blender.

Blend until completely smooth and silky.

Taste before reaching for the honey. A beautifully ripe mango will usually do most of the work for you.

If you prefer your lassi thinner, add another splash of cold milk. If your mango needs a little sweetness, add honey to taste.

Pour into two cold glasses and serve immediately.

The finished lassi should be thick enough to feel indulgent but loose enough to drink. The yoghurt should still have a little tang, the spices should sit quietly in the background, and above everything else, it should taste unmistakably of mango.

Preferably, drink it somewhere the afternoon sun can still find you.

And slowly enough for the evening to change around you.