“My grandmother’s,” says Radha Bhatia, when asked about her favourite lassi . “She made it with so much love and it reflected in her food.” Radha, in her recently-released book Lassis of India: Smoothies with a Twist (Om Books International), put together 74 recipes, 57 of which are ‘lassis with a twist’.
“When I was with my grandchildren one day, I told them about lassis and they had no clue,” says Radha. “But they were familiar with smoothies and the packaged drinks that they could get ready-made.” She wanted her grandchildren to enjoy the lassis she did during her younger days, and on that premise, her book slowly started taking form.
Radha collected recipes of lassis from across India — “From Kashmir to South India,” as she puts it. It is an interesting mix: From Punjab’s meethi lassi , to Kashmir’s dry fruit lassi and the more (pun unintended) watery thalicha mor (mustard-tempered buttermilk) from Tamil Nadu. Each recipe comes with Radha’s notes on when she tasted the drink. Under Sambharam, for instance, she writes of how she was “thrilled” to have discovered the drink in Kerala and “bought plants from a spice market in Kochi for my farm in Delhi”.
She writes about how she first tasted thalicha mor at a wedding. “It is also used as a cooking base for a popular Chettinad dish called thalicha idiyappam ,” she mentions.
“A tall glass of lassi makes a meal by itself. You can survive on just that.” So when does she prefer to have her glass? She says: “Oh, I can have it all day.”
