Assortment of Raitas

To me, raitas are yogurt done the right way. I can literally live off of them. Raita is actually a generic name of yogurt diluted to a given consistency, mixed with seasoning and any chopped or grated fruit or vegetable or even boondi (small fried gram flour balls). The idea is to have raw yogurt the main component of the dish. Raitas pack the nutrition of yogurt without being the boring old 'yogurt' besides being refreshing, tasty and extremely easy and versatile; what more can you ask for. It is an Indian accompaniment and goes very well with spicy Indian food. It is particularly served with Biryani and spicy Pulao.
I make raitas almost everyday as an accompaniment for our lunch. It has the ability to jazz up even the simplest of meals and can be whipped up in matter of minutes (sometimes even seconds, no kidding!). I prefer raita any day over plain yogurt. Here are a few of my favorites -

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Khasta Kachori/Flaky spicy lentil pastries

There is a small 'hole-in-the-wall' store in my home town. They have lines a mile long outside their store of people lined up to buy their goodies. What do they sell, you ask? Just one basic item, 'Mixture' (of course they have different varieties of it). Mixture is basically your trail mix done indian style. The store was started by this one guy who used to sell his product around town on a bicycle! Now he is a multi-millionaire. Talk about a success story. You will not find a soul in my town who is not crazy about his stuff. Even people from neighboring towns and cities come over and line up. Personally, I am crazy about that mixture too and a few other products he has now..my most favorite being the khasta kachori. A flaky deep fried small round kachori filled with spicy, slightly sour and sweet lentil mixture is just to die for. I can basically just live off of them. Whenever I visit India I make sure to pack my stock to bring back. Due to baggage limitations, I have even compromised on a dress or two so I can pack an extra set of his goodies. That probably gives you an idea how serious this is, right?
Unfortunately since I like it so much I run out within the first few weeks, okay maybe a couple of months, after getting back and always crave for it.
Here comes Sanjeev Kapoor to the rescue. I saw this awesome Kachori recipe on his site the other day. Just reading his recipe it sounded good and I bookmarked it.
Khasta basically means flaky and kachori is basically a fried dough ball filled with a spicy lentil based mix. Got around to trying it a couple of days back and let me tell you, I now have a solution for at least my Kachori craving (still looking for mixture though :)
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