Raw Vegan Mango Soup | GFCF, Dairy free | Fruit Soup

Vera, is an excellent food photographer, has a beautiful blog and is one of my recent flickr friends. I could not resist the temptation of the strawberry coconut milk soup she made some time back and wanted to have a big slurp right then. But Mumbai was already rushing into Summer and strawberries were out of question. The flavours were interesting, tempting and extremely appealing. I visioned it made with mangoes and I knew this is one soup my Grandfather would have loved very much.

My mother always says he was very strict and distant. We never saw that side of him. I guess his grandchildren brought out the child in him. He played with us as our equal and taught us several little things. Making dolls out of candy wrappers, a Tamil song to go with pounding the ball, and sing ‘ondara dakkara dakkara dun…..’, a limerick he sang as a child (I have added the Tamil limerick at the end of this post in case you are interested in knowing it). We would try to beat him but he would manage to get more bounces out of the ball without missing a single beat. Playing 28, a card game that would make him so animated, he would scatter the cards when he knew he was going to lose and exalt with pride when he won.

I remember him when I see my son jumping out of his chair vicariously enjoying a game of cricket on TV. My grandfather would go berserk when a fielder missed a potential catch. He loved chewing betel leaves with a fair amount of good tobacco. He loved good food, especially Kerala cuisine. And, he always loved ripe mangoes as an accompaniment to curd-rice, the last course of a South Indian meal.

This soup I am sure would have won his approval. The soup could very well be a shake, if you perceived so. The sharp sweetness of mangoes is smoothed by a kiss of coconut milk, and topped with pure coconut cream. A happy, peaceful union – this. I had promised to post something I made with the coconut cream and coconut butter last time. This is it.

Recipe: Raw Vegan Mango Fruit Soup
Serves: 4

Ingredients:

Ripe, juicy mangoes, preferably without fiber (I used kesar) – Scooped to measure 3 level cups.
Thick coconut milk (First extract) – 1 cup
Caster sugar – 2 tbsp.
Kala namak / black salt or pink salt – to taste
Dry mint leaves – To garnish
Coconut cream – 1 tsp. for each serving, to garnish
Optional – Retain a few rough chunks of mangoes to add to the soup

Method:

Mash the mangoes with a ‘pav-bhaji’ masher for a rough texture till coarsely juiced like I did or juice in a blender for a smoother consistency.

Add the coconut milk and fold into the ‘soup’.

Add a pinch of kala namak/black salt or pink salt as per taste. Garnish with coconut cream and serve cold.

We had almost two helpings each as it was irresistible.