Cucumber Peanut Raita Cucumber Peanut Pachadi

Raita is a very common recipe that I make often at home and cucumber raita is the most common one. I sometimes chop the cucumber and sometimes grate it. I have noticed that my boys love the texture of the raita when I make it with chopped cucumbers. Raita is a perfect accompaniment to any gravy or rice dish. It acts as a perfect cooling agent when having a spicy meal. During one of our regular chats, my dear friend Deepa gave me this recipe. She saw it in some Tamil blog and she passed it on to me. This was definitely something different from what I usually make and it was really good. When using grated cucumber, the raita seems to be lacking the texture. When making a large quantity of raita, chopping is a task and grating the cucumber is so much simpler. That is when this recipe came to my rescue and adding the peanuts add a wonderful texture and that is exactly what it needs. This raita also has a different spice mixture that makes this very different from the other ones. It has an amazing flavor from the ground green chilies and cilantro mixture. The green chili and cilantro also gives the raita a beautiful light green color. Use as little or as much as cilantro that you like. Cilantro can also be substituted with mint if you like the flavor of mint or both cilantro and mint can be used.

Ingredients to make Cucumber Peanut Raita – (serves-4)

Cucumber – 1 Peanuts (roasted) – 3 tbsp Green chilies – 2 Cilantro /Kothamalli – a handful Salt – as needed Oil – ½ tsp Cumin seeds – ½ tsp Yogurt/thick curd – 1 ½ cups

Procedure to make Cucumber Peanut Raita –

Peel and grate the cucumber in a bowl and keep aside.

Grind together the roasted peanuts, green chilies and cilantro into a smooth paste. If needed add a little water when grinding. If you do not have roasted peanuts, roast it in a pan until slightly brown, cool it down and then grind it with other ingredients. I used the roasted salted peanuts, so I skipped the roasting part.

Add the ground paste to the grated cucumbers along with required salt and mix it well. If using salted peanuts, keep that in mind when adding the salt.

Now add the thick curd to the cucumber mixture and mix it well.

Heat a tiny pan with oil and add the cumin seeds to it. Let it splutter and then add this to the raita.

Serve with Biriyani, pulao or roti’s.