I had a burst of cooking inspiration this weekend. Having been on vacation all week, I did a bit more culinary exploration of local restaurants than normal. I went to a couple Indian Buffets with Sabrina (not really new ones… but you may still be hearing more about them), and I got a chance to go back to Abay, which I had thoroughly enjoyed once before, and now have thoroughly enjoyed a second time.

Add to this all a peculiar imperative to find opportunities for my mother eat more food with ginger (also more on that later), and I had an intensive weekend of cooking experiments. As part of the experimentation, I decided to make some Pakora, that is, Indian vegetable fritters, because I had been enjoying them all week at our Indian Buffet trips. I was enjoying them more than usual also because I had taken to dipping the pakora in the raita (a yogurt-based condiment) provided by each buffet. I don’t know if such practice is authentic, or just some spontaneous innovation of Americans at the India Buffet, but I found it tasty and so decided to make a raita to accompany the pakora fritters.

Problem was, I didn’t find all of the ingredients I had hoped to find at my parents’ house. In fact, after scouring many raita recipes online, I found that I couldn’t put together any one recipe in its entirety. I scoured the recipes, getting a feel of what ingredients seemed often to go together and what didn’t. I quizzed my dad on what he had available in the fridge and in his vegetable garden. There was no plain yogurt to be had in the fridge, but my suspicion was that sour cream would do just fine in a pinch. My impression from the recipes I found online was that no particular spices or herbs where standard, and so I put together a raita based on what my parents’ had around the house and in their garden:

AROUND THE HOUSE RAITA

Combine ingredients and chill.

Obviously, this is not a precisely measured recipe. Nor, I believe, should it be. It should be noted that the cherry tomatoes I found in my dad’s garden were especially small, and having only quartered them, I felt like even then, they could have been smaller. The scallions and fresh mint leaves were easily snipped small. The sour cream was stirred in to the fresh ingredients to create a dip-like consistency without overwhelming the fresh ingredients (I even added a little milk to make it a little saucier). The spices were simply to taste. I did not add salt to the initial batch, for the sake of my dad’s dietary restrictions, but I added some to my own portion.