An Indian salad

chopped salad

Salads in India are a summer solution to extreme heat. The fruits and vegetables are the juiciest during summer. The reason being that there is ample sunshine to hasten the growth and along with enough water- they reach a full growth potential.

Salads when added to the plate take on the burden of providing roughage as well as the cooling quality to the spicy food. We see a lot of salads have curds and buttermilk added to add to the cooling element. This salad is a standard one of chopped variety that uses firm vegetables most of the time. Using chopped tomatoes and onions is also a standard in many cuisines and the additional choices are cucumbers, chickpeas for protein, soaked mung beans and a variety of soaked dals that are used to make it a wholesome dish in itself.

This salad has one cucumber, two tomatoes, one onion, one can of non-GMO chickpeas, fresh coriander and capsicum.

Malini Waghray is the founder, editor, immersive researcher and developer at Choosing Wellness.

Published by Hema Malini

I am a trained sociologist and an archival researcher. I am the principal investigator for an archival research project on the Brahma Kshatriyas of Hyderabad and also founder of choosingwellness.org. I also go by my other name Malini. I am a translator of notes that remain in the margins to bring the user of technologies into sharper focus. I use the term community researcher, immersive researcher to talk about the work I do. In the past, as a Director and user experience lead at Code for Princeton I worked with non-profits, community groups, users, and subject matter experts to identify areas of need. I translated this into conversations with brigade members, developers, potential users, and other stakeholders. The applied ethnography and social research skills got me to meet with a diverse set of people across the broad middle class spectrum in Urban India. Living and working in New Jersey for the past several years has given me a breadth and width of understanding and engaging with people adding critical diversity to my bracket of "users" and experience all rolled in one.