Amba Panna with a twist

Before you dismiss this as yet another amba panna, this comes with a story. I was meeting my friend B after 10 years and Mom and I started talking about our days together in Delhi. She used to be my college mate who also happened to live close by to our house and used come over for my Mom's company and good food over the weekend. One day she had a near heat stroke and was sick for a few days. My Mom took care of her and used to make her drink this and glucose water and other water based drinks to keep her hydrated and nurse her back to health. When Mom mentioned this drink and this story before she came I thought of making it again. Most of the work on this was done by my Mom. I served it chilled and enjoyed it too!

And this bubbly drink goes over to Srivalli who is celebrating mangoes in a big way with a Mango Mela.

Ingredients

1 large unripe mangoes
4 table spoon of sugar (add more if you want it sweet)
1 tea spoon black salt or kala namak.
1 tea spoon cumin seeds, dry-roasted
1 tea spoon of black pepper, dry-roasted
Soda

How To

Cook mangoes in a pressure cooker until 1 whistle.
Allow the pressure cooker to cool.
Take the cooled mangoes out of water and peel the skins off and collect the pulp and juice in a bowl
Place this pulp, with salt and sugar, in a blender and puree.
Fill in bottles and put in refrigerator for few hours so that it is nicely chilled.
Dry roast the cumin seeds and black pepper for 2 minutes on a pan and then coarsely grind.
To serve, add 1/2 cup pulp and 1/2 cup soda, add the coarse ground cumin seeds and black pepper and serve immediately before the soda fizzles out.

The Twist in this drink was the soda. Once you add the soda, the taste changes completely. The original version done at home or in Delhi didnt have any soda of course. In fact my Mom didn't like it with the soda at all, while my friend and her husband loved it.

So add soda only if you like the taste of soda... By the time I took the photos, I had run out of soda, so the pictures don't show the soda, else it looks cool too... Enjoy the amba panna and the summer....