raita

Raita is one of my favourite Indian side dishes. It's a vegetable and yogurt 'dip' that is refreshing and cool especially with spicy food. There are different ways to make it but here is how we do:

Ingredients:

Plain Yogurt (thick or Balkan style is best)

Cucumber

Carrot

Garlic

Cilantro

Salt

Jeera also called cumin- looks like this...

Directions:

Peel one carrot and then finely shred. Next, finely shred about half of a large cucumber. Shred or pound 2 garlic gloves and finely chop about 3 tablespoons of cilantro. Mix all the above with the yogurt. Place jeera in an ungreased frying pan and roast. You'll want to use about 3 times as much as I have in my hand in the picture above. Once roasted pound or roll them into a fine powder and mix with the other ingredients. Add salt to taste starting with about 3/4 tsp. Then enjoy!

*If you plan to eat this with rice know that some of the salt will be absorbed by the rice so you may want to slightly over-salt it.

It goes great with dhal and rice or chicken or even on a sandwich as a low-cal alternative to mayo and other dressings.

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