tomato and yogurt salad, or, the salad-hater's exception

I'm not a fan of salads. It's partly that I don't care for most raw vegetables and fruits, partly that salads call to mind (a) the 16 years when I was a vegetarian and people all too often brushed off this (admittedly inconvenient) fact with "oh, well, never mind, you can have a salad," and (b) a deeply unpleasant set of associations with weight-loss diets. (And point b is not an issue I am prepared to discuss further. Do not tell me about your weight-loss program. Do not proselytize about low-calorie foods, raw foods, your views on health, etc. etc. etc. I wish this didn't need saying, but it always does.)

Anyway, I've finally found a salad I really love. I make variations of this a lot and I always enjoy it. The recipe, if you can call it that, which I give below is my own adaptation of a basic recipe from Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking and some more elaborate salad recipes from Chandra Padmanabhan's Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine from South India.

( click here for the details )