Amchi Radish Raita & India Food Network

So, some news. I was recently featured in the ‘Food Stories’ section of the India Food Network – the editorial content of which is spearheaded by Kalyan Karmakar of the Finely Chopped fame. The India Food Network website has some really interesting stories featuring some exemplary people and their food journeys. One thing that IFN seems to be doing is promoting lesser known cuisines from India. I was really excited to promote Chitrapur Saraswat Cuisine through my post ‘Of Summer Picnics & Mum’s Raita’.

Here’s an excerpt. For the full story and recipe, visit the post here.

If you’ve grown up in the Middle East in the 90s, you must have a special place in your heart for picnics – family picnics, beach picnics and even school picnics. In a region so bound by societal rules, it was difficult for us as children to venture out on the streets to meet friends or play together. So, recreation either meant going to someone’s house or going for picnics.

School picnics were a given. Every year, the three divisions in each standard would go for a picnic where we would put up plays and sing songs and in general let our hair loose. One particular picnic on a hot summer day, when I was just about 11 years old, comes to mind. I still remember preparing for a group song and skit and having won the 1st place our division couldn’t be any happier.

As we all sat down on the lawn to eat the food that our mothers had lovingly prepared, I opened my dabba (those stainless steel vessels that fit into each other surprisingly well) and was elated that my mother had made her special mutton curry. And, then I went on to open the rest of the dabba, fully expecting rice. But, I was rather surprised to find that Amma had filled them with what looked like thayir sadam(the quintessential South-Indian curd rice) but was not. For some reason, she had filled the rest of the tiffin with my favourite radish raita that was a special dish in our household. Grated radish mixed with yoghurt and flavoured further with a simple tempering….