So first up with the raita I'm gonna get myself some nice natural yogurt,
absolutely lovely always nice to have with curries. I've got some onion seeds here, or
nigella seeds. I just heat it up in a hot pan so it's nice and smoky, then put it onto the yogurt
like that. What I'm gonna do is add some beautiful flavours to this. So a nice pinch of salt goes in,
that convinces it that it's savoury, a little pinch of pepper for good luck. Then I'm gonna
hit it up with a little bit of lemon juice so nice and refreshing and gorgeous - actually
what I can do is take one side of a box grater and use a little bit of that lovely lemon skin.
A little squeeze of lemon juice really makes it fresh and sort of full of life.
I'm then going to choose a herb. So I don't want to double up herbs really, or spices,
on any of the dishes really. So I'm going to take mint, which is absolutely an amazing
fresh fragrant herb. So this is where things get fun, and I remember being in India when they were
making a raita, and one of the classics is of course cucumber, but then I saw it with
carrot. And actually I was picking some stuff from the garden, and I've got some lovely beetroot.
So the nice thing is whether it's cucumber or carrot or beetroot, you can do anything
with a raita as long as it's crunchy and you can grate it. And I love that, that you can kind of
duck and dive depending on what you've got right? So put it onto this fine side here, and I'll grate
this little carrot. And of course what you get from the carrot is that amazing sweetness
and the colour. But actually they're all a bit small and there's beautiful beetroots
around right, so I'll pick that. So I've got this beautiful beetroot, and I'll grate this
exactly the same as the carrot. So what I love about this recipe is it works and does its job
for dipping and putting with your curries, you know whether it's carrot or whether it's
beets which is also really nice and sweet, or you could use radish, you could use cucumber,
or anything crunchy. Use what you've got - chop and change it, experiment, have fun with it.
Look at that, absolutely beautiful, look at those colours. So carrot and the beets, it's about like
a handful or two tablespoons, goes in like that. And with the mint I'll just gather it all up
like that and I'll just finely chop it.
So in we go. And look at that, you know that that is just full of beautiful flavours. So I'm gonna
get a little spoon, have a little mix up like this. Beautiful. For me what I love about this
is it's quite cooling it's quite refreshing. That with the different curries you know, poppadoms,
hot but crispy spongy naans, that's gonna be absolutely amazing. Let's have a little try.
Wow! Okay, so we've got sweetness freshness it's creamy it's cooling, but those toasted nigella
seeds have added a funky almost sesame seed-like popcorny sort of vibe. I love it. Maybe a tiny bit
more lemon juice and if you want, completely unclassic, just a little bit of olive oil.
This is gonna do its job beautifully. So that's my raita done. Next up quick little hack:
mango chutney, buy a good one, great lots of flavours but sweet on sweet on sweet,
and that's kind of its job admittedly. But then with just one ingredient,
or two, we can take it to the next level right. So empty a jar into a bowl, and I saw this
little hack in Delhi with a street vendor, it blew my mind. So take a pomegranate cut it in half, and
the goodness in there the colour is extraordinary. So we're going to do two things:
first one, if I don't get myself you know a little bit dirty, is hold it in one hand,
hold your fingers like that, put it over so the juice is going to go through but not the seeds,
and squeeze hard right? Look at the colour, look at that! Pure goodness.
But with this half we want to get spanking okay, and again hold your fingers out
so it's raining capsules like that. Beautiful. We're just going to fold this up,
and that is the easiest hack of all hacks. This will transform any little flatbreads or any
sandwich fillings, or even with cheese, curries, whatever you want to do it's all good. And all I
would do is take a chosen herb, we did mint in there so again we're purposefully contrasting,
and I'll just roll it up and finely chop it. And this coriander will just be fresh and
delicious. So there you go. So quick, but really thoughtful - two beautiful dips made with love.
Great, that's what I want.