soup wheat flour yogurt (Maadi)

                                     Refreshing maadi


माडी - Wheat flour yogurt soup
No suprise..Marwari summers are long and mercilessly hot.  The scorching heat and the blinding sun are enough to scare visitors away from Marwar but Marwaris being a resilient adapting breed, change their lifestyle constantly through the year to acccommodate the many excesses of mother nature.  Summer dinners get served on rooftops.  A चाडा (a clay water pot) migrates to the terrace along with rollable mattresses and cotton sheets.  The evening ends with strains of music floating in the cool air  "साजन आया ए सखी कई मनवार करों.. थाल भरों गज मोतियों ..ऊपर नैन धरों..."  It is hard to describe the beauty of a clear desert starlit sky of a summer night in Jodhpur.

Maadi is a popular accompaniment to the summer evening suppers.  Yogurt makes this soup almost a beverage.  Cracked mustard and sauteed Jeera (Cumin) add a bite to the soup.  All in all, you can not have a better representative of the summer dinner in Jodhpur.  Here is Madi.

Ingredients:
4 cups water
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tea spoon salt
2 tablespoon mustard seeds coarsely grounded

                            yogurt with mustard powder and
                                     cooked wheat flour




1 1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 tea spoon cumin seeds
pinch of asoefatida
two tablespoon ghee
                 Dissolve the wheat flour in a vessel in cold water taking care that there are no lumps formed .Add salt to it .Cook this mixture by stirring constantly on a medium flame.It will start thickening and then will boil.Cook for 5 mts more after it starts boiling.
Let it cool.Beat the yogurt.add yogurt and mustard powder to the cooked flour mixture.
Seasoned it with cumin seeds and hing tadka in hot ghee.
After putting tadaka always cover the vessel by a lid so as to retain the aroma of chhonk.

Serve in a soup bowl with an ice cube in it.