White Gazpacho Soup vs. Cucumber Raita

I was going through some food blogs today and came to a very interesting conclusion. There are many foods of different cultures that are actually quite similar to one another. But since they have various exotic names ,it sometimes becomes hard to tell .

Let me start off by telling you about White Gazapacho Soup . Now gazpacho is basically a Spanish cold soup that is made of raw vegetables. Usually tomatoes but in this case since the soup is suppose to be "white" so it uses cucumbers. Here's a recipes that I found off an excellent blog called 100 days of real food.




This White Gazpacho Soup uses cucumbers, garlic, parsley, yogurt, sour cream, vinegar and salt and everything is blended into a puree and served as soup. Here is a gourmet version of the same.

OK now in my part of the world i.e. Pakistan, we have something called "Kheeray ka Raita" which is cucumber raita. Raita is a condiment uses as a sauce or dip. It accompanies many meals during the summer time and can be consumed with curry, rice or bread.

My favorite recipe is to take 2 cups of nice thick yogurt and add one large grated cucumber to it. Then add salt and black pepper to taste along with 1/4-1/2 level tsp of garlic powder. That's it. Your good to go!



The soup is obviously finer in texture and the raita is lumpy and has a nice bite to it. The former is used as starter or course in a meal and the latter is a condiment. Therefore I cant say they are both the same thing but quite similar. I found this comparison quite interesting and hope you did too. Ahhhhh the wonderful world of food!