Calories in Lauki Raita

Lauki raita differs from most raitas in that its vegetable is cooked first. Grated bottle gourd is boiled or steamed until soft, squeezed, cooled and then mixed into beaten curd. The recipe here uses 50 g of gourd and 100 g of curd, which makes one small katori. At home the gourd is often more generous than that, and the raita may be finished with a tempering of cumin or mustard in ghee, which the recipe does not include. It is a household dish and is seldom on a restaurant menu, so the home portion is the one that matters.

Protein supplies 28% of the energy, fat 33% and carbohydrate 40%, and all but a trace of it comes from the curd. Bottle gourd is one of the most watery vegetables in the kitchen: it adds volume, a soft texture and most of the bowl's 1.3 g of fibre, and little else. That is why this raita, at 86 kcal, is only slightly above a mint raita made of curd alone, at 81 kcal. The curd supplies calcium too. Its 8 g of sugars is almost all the curd's own; nothing sweet is added.

In energy terms a bowl of lauki raita is small: about 4% of a sedentary man's daily requirement and 5% of a woman's. It is typically eaten with roti and a dry sabzi, or with khichdi and pulao, and it brings 6.1 g of protein to meals that are often short of it. Because the gourd is soft and mild, it is a raita that children and older people find easy to eat. Two bowls are 172 kcal and 12.2 g of protein; three are 258 kcal.

Taste a small piece of the raw bottle gourd before cooking it, and discard the gourd if it is bitter. A bitter lauki can cause severe stomach upset, and anyone who feels unwell after eating one should see a doctor promptly. As for the raita itself, it is salted to taste, so the usual care with salt applies, and a dietitian can advise anyone on a restricted diet.