Milk (31 page)

VARIATION:
This becomes a light, pleasant vegetarian cold soup for two or three people with the addition of 1 cup ice water and perhaps an extra pinch of salt. Some people put an ice cube in each soup bowl.

T
he yogurt-based
Indian preparations called
raitas
—there is no good English word, since they might equally well be called salads or relishes—are of innumerable different kinds. There is scarcely a vegetable or fruit that can’t be turned into a raita. This cucumber-based version happens to be the best known to diners in Indian-American restaurants. At a glance, it somewhat resembles the preceding Turkish cacık or Greek tzatziki. The main differences are that cucumber raitas are made without garlic and usually are laced with a dash of spices (cumin, black pepper, red pepper, sometimes others). Chopped tomato figures in some versions. Like many dishes of the subcontinent, raitas receive a different treatment in southern India as well as a different name,
pachadi.

If you have to use the thick-skinned American-type cucumbers, see the suggestion on
this page
.

YIELD:
About 3 cups

Either cut the
cucumbers into very fine dice or shred them on the coarse side of a box grater. Squeeze out any excess moisture. Peel and seed the optional tomato and chop very fine.

Put the yogurt in a small bowl and whisk smooth. Mix in the cucumber, tomato, cumin, black pepper, salt, optional minced chile pepper, and chopped mint or cilantro. Serve garnished with a dusting of cayenne or paprika and a few whole mint or cilantro leaves.

Some people make this hours ahead and let it sit to marry the flavors. I like to serve it freshly mixed.

VARIATION:
For
Cucumber
Pachadi, follow the directions for raita but use cilantro leaves and 1 or 2 small green chiles. Heat a little
ghee
or vegetable oil (1 tablespoon or less) in a small skillet and toss in ⅛ teaspoon Indian brown mustard seeds and a few curry leaves. (You can also add a pinch of ground asafetida; 1 teaspoon each whole
urad dal,
also called “black gram”; and
channa dal,
Indian split chickpeas; and/or a small dried red chile.) When the mustard seeds begin to pop, pour the contents of the skillet over the yogurt-cucumber mixture and stir to combine.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
Raitas and pachadis can be made with any vegetable that takes your fancy, crisp and raw (let’s say, sliced or grated radishes) or cooked (sautéed diced eggplant, chopped spinach). There are onion raitas, mint raitas, sweet-potato raitas, mixed raw vegetable raitas.…

A
favorite among the many Indian fruit raitas. It is served in the same way as the preceding cucumber version, but in my opinion goes best with Indian rice-based dishes. Banana raitas can be sweet and mild, or—like this one—distinctly punchy. Tone down the chile if you like, but please do
not
use any sort of low-fat or nonfat yogurt.

YIELD:
About 4 cups

Cut the peeled bananas lengthwise into quarters and crosswise into thin slices. Put them in a bowl, season with lemon juice, and toss to coat well.

Beat the yogurt and salt very smooth with a wooden spoon. Add the bananas and all other ingredients, reserving a little of the cilantro for garnish. Give it all a good stir and let stand for at least half an hour at room temperature to marry the flavors; serve garnished with the extra cilantro. It does not keep, so plan to serve it within an hour or two at most.

W
hy walnuts should frequently be combined with yogurt in some of the oldest Eurasian cuisines is no mystery. Dairy animals and yogurt-making historically flourished in many of the Old World regions where walnut trees grew—Greece, the Caucasus, the Vale of Kashmir. (For another example, see
Tarator
.) There are many variations on the theme—coarse-textured and minimalist, bound with bread or pot cheese, enriched with stock, a little vinegary, a little sweet. This versatile Kashmiri condiment is only one possibility among many. It is traditionally made with the local medium-hot chile peppers, which can be used green but more often are dried when ripe and pulverized to make a seasoning somewhat like ground dried New Mexico chiles. Hot Hungarian paprika (or a mixture of sweet and hot) will do. Experiment with any kind of hot, mild, fresh, or dried chile you like. The proportions can be elastic; for a looser-textured sauce, increase the yogurt to 1 cup.

It is worth looking for young, sweet walnuts; the skins don’t have the harsh tannic bite of older ones. Stores catering to immigrants from Turkey or the Caucasus often have excellent walnuts.

YIELD:
About 1 cup

Grind the walnuts in a food processor, stopping just when the pulverized bits start coming together in a paste. Scrape out into a small bowl; add the ground chile, salt, garam masala, and yogurt and stir to combine thoroughly. Serve at room temperature as a condiment for meats and vegetables, or a dip with crudités and any Indian bread.

A
mong the many ways of cooking lamb meatballs in the Diverse Sources Belt, baking them in a custardlike yogurt sauce is one of the most delicious. For this Turkish version, be sure to use a good rich yogurt. I like the meatballs quite tart (from lemon juice and sumac) and a bit hot (from Turkish red pepper and paprika), with a strong jolt of cumin. Any of these can be cut back to gentler proportions.

YIELD:
8 meatballs

Set the yogurt to drain briefly in a cheesecloth-lined colander; soak the bread in a little warm water until well softened. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Grate the onion on the coarse side of a box grater, and mince the garlic very fine. Thoroughly beat one of the eggs. Wring the water out of the bread. Place the onion, garlic, egg, and bread in a large mixing bowl with the ground meat. Add the Aleppo pepper, paprika, sumac, cumin, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper. Mix everything very thoroughly with your hands and shape into 8 oval meatballs.

Heat the oil to rippling in a heavy medium skillet. Working in two batches, brown the meatballs well on both sides. As they are done, remove them to a shallow 2-quart baking dish like an 8-inch Pyrex pan.

Beat the remaining 3 eggs and stir in the partially drained yogurt. Pour this mixture over the meatballs and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Serve at once.

A
ll the yogurt homelands possess some simple dish based on the unbeatable combination of yogurt and eggs. Any egg-loving cook should be able to come up with marvelous ways of pairing the two. This Turkish example, which is always glorified with paprika-reddened butter, may start your imagination going.

YIELD:
4 servings

Preheat the oven to the lowest setting. Divide the yogurt sauce among four ramekins of about 1½- to 2-cup capacity, and set in the oven to barely warm.

Fill a shallow saucepan about 1½ to 2 inches deep with water, add the vinegar, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a bare simmer. Poach the eggs, two or three at a time, by breaking them into a saucer and slipping them into the simmering water; let cook about 3 minutes or just until set. Carefully lift out the eggs with a slotted spoon, letting them drain briefly, and put them into the warmed ramekins (two eggs to each). Season with salt and pepper.

Gently melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the paprika or crushed red pepper. Tilt the pan to let the solids settle to the bottom, drizzle a little of the clear red-orange butter over each portion, and serve at once.

VARIATIONS:
Instead of making the garlic sauce, mix creamy plain yogurt with a little finely crumbled feta cheese and dried Turkish mint. The dish is also very good with eggs fried sunny-side up rather than poached.

T
o English-speakers in India, “curd” is the local equivalent of
yogurt. The popular southern dish “curd rice” is a sort of rice salad using plain cooked rice, some diced cucumber with or without other fresh seasonings, and a
tarka
(special enrichment) of dried spices briefly sizzled in hot ghee or oil, the whole thing being bound with a yogurt-milk dressing. Now that so many of us have access to
Indian dals and spices, it deserves to be discovered by non-Indian cooks. I find curd rice endlessly useful as a lively room-temperature side dish that can be made hours ahead. And it wouldn’t take much (some more diced or slivered vegetables, cooked chickpeas, leftover chicken or meat) to turn it into a main dish, vegetarian or otherwise.

This is one time that you aren’t aiming for fluffy, dry rice with every grain beautifully distinct. Nor should you spring for basmati rice; any plain, nonconverted long-grain rice will do. You don’t want it wet when cooked, but it should be just very slightly soggy.