Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Boondi Raita

    I have been thinking lately of how good, old times were. Certain shade of  a colour, a chuckly laugh, smell of a perfume, a televison jingle, a light drift of breeze, all these evoke memories, not knowlingly though but it gives me a sense of reunion with my childhood days.I am more over surprised only to find so many memories related to food.When S and I returned from school only to find Mom had a long day at work and it was then our experiments in the kitchen started with a need to feed ourselves. This need needed no time to turn to our hobby. Later on during my college and then when I started work I was always happy when S would be home earlier than me.Some brunch would  definitely be waiting for me. My amateur cook has progressed to be a wonderful ratatouille and a handsome young man.Missing you a lot S!! specially because you are back home and I am not!!
Boondi raita is something I learnt to make in those days. After a no of permutations, combinations I have settled down of this recipe now.
I use


1 bowl of Boondi, boondi is small round beads of chickpea flour deep fried in oil. I buy it from the Indian grocery stores here.
1 bowl of yogurt. Mix sugar and salt according to your taste. It should be sweetish-salty to taste.Add green chilli-cumin seed paste as per your liking. More if you like it spicy.
Mix the boondi and yogurt mixture. The yougurt should be slightly more as the boondi should absorb the yogurt. You can also add 3-4 spoons of water to get the right consistency. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

Sometimes the all yougurt is absorbed and the raita turns dry. In this case one can add more yogurt or yogurt and water miture to get the right consistency.Earlier I used to soak the boondi in warm water to get the boondi soft immediately and then squeez the water out but this gives it a watery taste which I unlike. The refrigerated one is more richer in taste.In case you are in a hurry and dont have the time to refrigerate use a mix of yogurt and warm water. Soak the boondi in it and then squeez out the liquid, then adding the yogurt and spices as mentioned above.

Well once the boondi is soft sprinkle red chilli powder, pepper, cumin-corriander powder and finely chopped corriander. This raita should be served chilled along with Pulav or Biryani.

2 comments:

AJ said...

Nice post, the raita looks good!!

Deepti said...

Thanks Apu!!