Easy Mango Lassi

I love Indian food, I have learned to make and freeze some of my favorite Indian meals.  Many grocery stores have also started carrying naan and I find myself going out for Indian food less often.  After all, I have delicious homemade Indian in my freezer.  This is a wonderful thing as I get to have my favorite Indian dishes regularly without having to spend a lot of money.  The downside was that I wasn't getting to have a mango lassi with my Indian dinner.  The obvious solution was to learn to make that as well. 

I tried a few different recipes I found online and wasn't really happy with any of them.  Many called for fresh mango, which while delicious, it is sometimes hard to find ripe ones.  Plus having to peel, pit and cut up mangoes kind of defeats the purpose of having convenient freezer meals.  Then I tried frozen mango chunks from the grocery store.  That did not make a good lassi.  For some reason mango gets really chalky when frozen.  Finally I discovered canned mango and created a tasty and convenient lassi that makes it so I can have the full Indian restaurant dining experience at home.  I'm going to give you the recipe, but it is really flexible.  Don't be afraid to change things around to fit your tastes.

Serves 4

1 15 oz can mango in syrup
2 cups plain yogurt ( I use Greek yogurt, but regular should be fine)
3 cups ice
honey to taste

1. Pour the mango, including the syrup into a blender.  Add the yogurt and blend until smooth.
2. My blender wasn't large enough to handle the full recipe, so I poured out half the mango-yogurt mixture into another container.
3. Add half the ice and blend until smooth.  Add honey to taste.
4. Pour the lassi into cups to serves.  Repeat step 3 with the rest of the mango-yogurt and the ice.

Roasted Chicken Tikka

Life has been crazy busy for us lately.  In October my husband learned that his company would be closing down in December and began job hunting.  A new job for him meant a move would be likely for our family.  We started packing, and I stopped adding freezer meals to our freezer.  He received a job offer and left for New York shortly before Christmas.  We already had plans to go on a cruise for Christmas, so he flew back to join us for that.  After the cruise we drove back to Mississippi to get the rest of our stuff and then drove on to New York.  We had a month of relaxed packing followed by a month of frantic packing followed by an awesome and relaxing cruise and ended it all with 4 days of driving through 9 different states.

As soon as I learned about his company closing I stopped adding meals to my freezer and switched to a focus on eating what we had.  It was great to not need to cook on top of everything else we had going on.  We didn't quite make it through all the meals we had in the freezer, and I gave the last of them to a woman I knew who had just had a baby.  Now we are in temporary housing while we wait to move into the house we are in the process of buying.  That means no freezer meals for us right now.  I miss them.  Life is much simpler when dinner is ready and in the freezer every day.  I do have a couple recipes that I made in my last batch of freezer cooking that I haven't gotten around to posting yet what with all the frantic packing. So I have something to post while I wait to get back to my freezer cooking.

This isn't a chicken tikka like you might be thinking about with chunks of chicken in a creamy tomato sauce that is served over rice, although I do have a freezer version of chicken tikka masala if that is what you are looking for.  No, this is chicken marinated in a yogurt marinade and roasted with potatoes and cauliflower.  It is delicious.  I served this to guests a few months ago and one in particular raved about it continually.  

Chicken Tikka Masala

My freezer meals have come in very handy lately as I just had a baby two weeks ago.  I am very fortunate to have wonderful family and friends that have helped us with meals since the baby was born, but the freezer meals came in very handy during the last months of my pregnancy when I had no energy to do anything let alone cooking.  I haven't actually cooked in months, and I've been totally coasting on my freezer meals.  This has been great for me but not so great for my blog.  I do have a few new things in the freezer that I still need to post about.  I hope to get to them soon and then start generating more freezer meals.

I have recently discovered another advantage to freezer meals besides being able to eat a delicious dinner when I don't have energy to cook.  I have three young children now and like many young children, they are not always the best about trying new things or eating their dinner.  However, young children become more open to trying foods with repeated exposure, and it turns out that having multiple batches of the same thing in my freezer means repeated exposure.  After the same meal has made enough appearances my kids will generally try it.  After more appearances and trying the food, sometimes they even like it.  Chicken Tikka Masala is the perfect example.  My daughter was initially reluctant to try it, but after several exposures she has declared it her favorite meal.  It's one of my favorites too.

Saag Paneer

I cannot tell you how delighted I am to have discovered a way to freeze this dish.  Saag paneer is one of my favorite meals and my favorite Indian dish.  Unfortunately we only have one Indian restaurant in town and while they have some delicious food their saag paneer is not great. It can also be pretty time consuming to make saag paneer.  Due to the lack of good saag paneer in my town and how time consuming it is, I haven't been able to have saag paneer on a regular basis for a few years now, hence the delight at being able to freeze it.  Now I make a quadruple bathc and can have it even more frequently than I did when we lived in a town with more Indian restaurants.  As I've said before, Indian food is one of my favorite things to cook.  It's such an enjoyable sensory experience.

Delicious saag paneer with an equally delicious mango lassi right next to it.

This recipe is time consuming and I classify it as difficult based solely on making the paneer, which is a process.  If you can find a store bought paneer or if you want to replace the paneer altogether with chickpeas, chicken or potatoes, this actually becomes and reasonably fast and easy dish.  I love the paneer though, so it's worth the effort to me to make it.

Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)

Occasionally someone asks me what my favorite thing to cook is and I generally tell them Indian food.  The process of making Indian food is very enjoyable as it requires a lot of ingredients with various and amazing smells.  Generally you start by cooking aromatics like onions, garlic, peppers and fresh ginger.  Then you add spices like cumin, garam masala, cinnamon, chili powder, tumeric, and on and on.  Each stage of the process introduces new aromas and they continue to change as the aromatics and the spices continue to cook.  Finally you add the ingredients that make up the bulk of sauce and simmer.  The scent continues to change.  All together it makes for a wonderful sensory experience.  Plus at the end I have delicious Indian food to eat, and that always makes me happy.

Unfortunately, making Indian food is a time consuming and labor intensive process.  All of those aromatics have to be peeled and minced.  The many spices must be found in the cupboard and measured.  Often the meat requires a marinade.  Plus the cooking process if generally fairly long.   Generally when I make Indian food I have had to set aside an entire afternoon to work on it.  It was a happy day when I realized that some of my favorite Indian dishes would freeze very well.