An evening of cooking success!

Last night my friends and I hosted a Yushu fundraiser dinner. Saturday and sunday we spent all day cooking. My friends, Jessica, Tashi and I made about 400 momos, 200 meat and 200 potato. We bought a nice garlic chili sauce and I also made the summer chili recipe and we made a small side salad .

We had a few disasters including sticky steamers (even when oiled) a freezer accident where a whole bunch of momos stuck together, and arriving at the venue to find no sound system set up, but in the end it was a great success.

More than a pound of chili sauce was gone to the scrapings, we we finished the evening with a handful of each kind of momos, which we gave to the staff of Emack and Bolio's who gave us their space for the evening. We earned more than $600 to donate to victims of the quake in Yushu this past April.

All in all, a cooking success story!

HUGE thanks to the Palden family, fantastic local musicians Taina Asili, Gaetano Vaccaro and David Rubin who performed, and our wonderful friend Sonam who rushed in when crises hit at the end.


Recipes we cooked:

Beef Momos
Potato Momos
Sonam's Summer Chili

Raita!

A favorite Indian treat of mine is raita, a cool yoghurt salad of sorts. My mom also liked it, so when I came home, I made a big batch (a small bowl of which is featured above.) I ate that bowl in about 2 minutes.

Mixed Vegetable Raita
Ingredients:

2 Cups plain yoghurt (Dahi)
1/2 medium red onion (or, if you are in India, 1 small indian red onion) finely chopped.
1 medium tomato, finely chopped
1/2 of a medium sized cucumber, chopped
1-1 1/2 TBS chopped cilantro
1-2 chopped green chilis (to taste. I personally leave these out, even though I like spicy food, I don't like the taste of raw chili)
1 tsp cumin powder (more or less to taste)
Salt to taste

pour the yoghurt into a mixing bowl. Whip it with a fork. My dad likes to drain the yoghurt, but I prefer it a bit watery.
chop and add the cilantro, mix
Peel the cucumber, scoop out the seeds. Chop the cucumber, add to the yoghurt and mix.
chop and add the onions, mix
chop the tomatos and squeeze them out a bit between your hands, then add (too much tomato juice will water down or curdle the yoghurt)
add the cumin powder and salt, mix together. Taste and adjust.

Serve chilled.

Currently, I have a nice big container of Raita in my fridge. I am a happy camper.