My brother and I bought a chip and dip dish. This is a much better use for it…
This is also such a simple recipe. No cooking involved! Yogurt is often served with an Indian meal to beat the heat of spicy meat and vegetable dishes. It balances out and tempers a plate of mixed sauces really nicely. Beat 3 cups of plain yogurt with a fork and then add a few other ingredients. In this case I needed to add a few tablespoons of freshly chopped cilantro, half of a hot green chili pepper, diced, a few pinches of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and a thinly sliced, partially diced, scallion.
I used a long “Indian” chili. In the book, the picture of the chili is of a long, thin variety called Hari Mirch. This was not the name in the store in the basement of St. Lawrence Market, obviously, but I figured the generic and offensive “Indian” classification would do.
When these things were combined I spread it all in the new glass platter (sounds much better than ‘chip and dip’…what awful marketing…actually, my brother bought it because he thought he would get some use out of it for its intended purpose after I left. In this case, excellent marketing, because my brother is not one to buy nice glass serving dishes. This all leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth, rather than the spicy sweet yogurt). Then I sprinkled a cup of broken-up (not the painful kind) walnut pieces of top. Simple, beautiful.
The only tough part of this recipe is choosing the right yogurt. A fat-free plain yogurt will be disgusting. It will be runny and bitter, and as much as you beat it with a fork, it will be soup. Then there are Mediterranean or Greek-style (thick) yogurts. These are overly fatty and creamy and I don’t like them either. It feels like eating something way too dense. Mostly I don’t like the flavour. I’ve eaten just about every brand of plain organic probiotic yogurt (real yogurt should be probiotic even if it doesn’t expressly say…as opposed to overly processed, sweetened, commercial yogurts, like a lot of the Danone’s and Yoplaits. Check the ingredients for bacterial culture. They generally all have it, but no quantities are given, and billions are better than thousands). After years of research, I find that the important points of a good yogurt are:
1. A tangy flavour without being bitter or acidic
2. A mild sweetness
3. A balance between thickness and thinness
3. A milk fat content between 2% and 3.8%
My favourite brand is Pinehedge Farms. It comes in returnable glass bottles that you pay a deposit for when you purchase them. It’s made in St. Eugene, Ontario by the Heinzle Family. When you pop the top on the bottle there’s a solidified layer of milk fat on the top that tastes incredible if you sneak a bit before you mix it back into the rest of the liquid (If you don’t mix it back in, the rest won’t be as creamy as it should be…so don’t eat it all and leave the liquid or you’ll be disappointed with the rest of the yogurt. A good challenge in will control). If you use this yogurt you’ll get a beautiful raita that’s a bit sweet, a bit tangy, a bit savoury, and a very cooling. Brilliant traditional Indian wisdom.
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