Cooking for Two: The Mango Lassi Experiment

Since our mutually-enjoyed pasttimes clearly involved the consumption of foodstuffs, I decided to try to cook for my new husband. Now this may not sound like a very big deal to you, but I had given up cooking long, long ago, due to the fact that nobody ever did anything but criticize anything I made ("WHAT is the green part in this?" "Do we HAVE to eat that?" and, one of my favorites, "Well, the only thing I can find to criticize about this dinner is the color palette"), not to mention that as a single mom working full-time and going to graduate school, I just didn't have time for it. And my kids had gotten big enough to make their own salads and pop their own Pop-tarts in the toaster.

But with all the kids off at college, the workload cut back, and graduate school reduced to a manageable internship, I had some time on my hands. So I decided to make Mango Lassis. This may not seem like cooking to you, since no heat--or sharp utensils--are involved. But it was cooking to me, for it involved a recipe and ingredients and my time, and it could be criticized. I chose Mango Lassis because they are my husband's favorite Indian drink, sort of a mango smoothie, and because we had a can of "mango pulp" from India in our pantry, a gift from my husband's good friend Hirin's father, who owns a mango farm in India. So I got online to find a recipe.

There were a dozen different recipes for Mango Lassis! Some involved yogurt and milk, some left out the milk, some required only fresh mango, others insisted that the acid in fresh mangos would ruin the drink and that only canned pulp should be used. None of the recipes used the same proportions. Every other recipe included a spice called cardamom, which sounded so cool I decided I would definitely use some of that. And there was even a jar of it in the pantry (what on earth had my husband used it for?) After studying all of the recipes carefully, I fixed upon one that contained the mango pulp and cardamom I had on hand, as well as yogurt (NOT FAT-FREE, it advised in bold letters) and ice, in proportions that were fairly equal and would be easy to remember.

Mango Lassi

2 cups mango pulp (I used Taj brand)

2 cups whole milk plain yogurt (I had to go to a health-food store to find this!)

2 teaspoons sugar

1-2 teaspoons cardamom (I only used one teaspoon the first time because I was chicken, but will use two teaspoons from now on. For one thing, that makes all the ingredients 2 of something.)

2 cups ice

Puree all ingredients in a blender and serve chilled.

Makes 4 one-cup servings (who are we kidding, it barely made two glasses of deliciousness for me and my husband)

Sounds easy, right? It was easy! But I was still sweating bullets as I poured it out into a glass for my husband and he took his first sip. "This is good," he said, and then I took a sip. It WAS good--creamy-rich and smooth and sweet, but not too sweet. The cardamom had the flavor of India itself. It was so good that I had a Mango Lassi for lunch every day until we ran out of mango pulp!

Now that my confidence is up, it's on to my next project: DINNER! I'm starting simple. Soup. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I'm thinking of getting this t-shirt from http://www.turbaninc.com/: