Cool Raitas for Hot Summers

Yoghurt or Dahi is something we all love with an Indian meal and more so to cool our stomachs in the hot summer months. To make yoghurt more interesting and tasty keeping the hot weather in mind, one can add a number of fruits and vegetables like cucumber, mint, onion-tomato, potato, pineapple, apple-ginger. I am sharing below the recipes for cucumber raita(you can follow the same for mint, replacing mint for cucumber), apple-ginger, onion-tomato, potato. You can now enjoy a delicious new raita everyday of the week this summer.

Cucumber Raita
Ingredients:
• 1 medium sized bowl of yoghurt
• One cucumber peeled and finely chopped
• Red chillie powder (optional)
• A few chopped coriander leaves finely chopped, if available
• Salt, Pepper and Cummin seed powder to taste
Procedure:
Empty the yoghurt in a bigger bowl. Blend yoghurt with a spoon or beater, till smooth. Add chopped cucumber and salt and mix well. Sprinkle pepper and cummin powder and red chilli powder (optional). Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.
Potato Raita
Ingredients:
All ingredients same as in Cucumber Raita except that you need to replace the cucumber with 1 medium sized potato boiled, peeled and cut into small pieces.
Procedure:
Exactly the same as in cucumber raita.


Tomato Onion Raita
Ingredients:
• 1 medium sized bowl of yoghurt
• One medium sized tomato finely chopped
• 1 small onion finely chopped
• 1 green chillie finely chopped
• A few coriander leaves finely chopped
• Salt and Pepper to taste
Procedure:
Empty the yoghurt in a big bowl. Blend yoghurt with a spoon or beater, till smooth. Add chopped tomatoes, onion, green chilli and salt and mix well. Sprinkle pepper on top. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve chilled.