Delightful Healthy Recipes

The maxim “you are what you eat” has defined dietary thinking for hundreds of years. The prevailing interpretation is simple: our bodies, like the foods that we eat, are chemical compositions. In order to live long and healthy lives, and to maximise our potential, we must consume the right chemicals — that is, foods with the right nutrients. Not so long ago, however, this saying was understood quite differently, indicating a profound shift in the way that we think about our diet and ourselves — a shift that has powerful implications for current health debates. In ancient Greek and Roman medicine, prevention was key. Regimen, commonly called dietetics, prescribed a lifestyle designed to keep people healthy. Indeed, while doctors did everything in their power to cure ailing patients, dietetics was considered the most important area of medical practice. With a sound diet, one would presumably never need a cure.
Dietetics was a prescription for an ordered manner of living, guiding people not only on matters of food and drink, but on all governable aspects of their lives that affected well-being, including their places of residence, exercise, sleeping patterns, bowel movements, sexual activity, and an area neglected by medicine today: emotional control.
In short, dietetics was a matter of virtue as well as of bodily health. The medical profession doled out advice about how one should eat in the same breath as instructions about how one should live — and about what sort of person one should be.
Traditional dietetic advice now seems banal, with its almost exclusive focus on moderation. For example, dietetic counsel would recommend that patients eat neither too much nor too little; sleep when necessary, but not excessively; exercise, but not violently; and control anger and stress. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription, “Nothing in excess,” while Aristotelian philosophy held that the golden mean was the path to the good.
Given the current frenzy of fad diets and the search for simple remedies for complex conditions, moderation in all things may seem like shabby medicine. But dietetics' conviction that health and morality are two sides of the same coin is a deep-rooted notion. After all, Christianity lists gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins, while temperance is one of the cardinal virtues.
Both good and good for you, moderation became a commanding idea: by rooting medical advice in powerful systems of social values, dietetics shaped medical thought for centuries. Rejecting dietetic advice amounted to rejecting moral wisdom.
This merging of medicine and morality now seems naively unscientific, thanks to “nutrition science,” which replaced traditional dietetics as a formal discipline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nutritional experts today are more likely to suggest monitoring cholesterol levels than they are to give such holistic and common-sense advice as moderation. Gluttony was once a sin; obesity is now a disease (or a “risk factor” for other diseases).
Because science ostensibly advances by setting aside moral questions to address material cause-and-effect relationships, this shift could be perceived as progress. But the separation of the “good” from the “good for you” limits the influence of modern nutritional expertise on people's behavior, ultimately undermining the goal of improving public health.
Historical change cannot be undone. But the ways in which modern societies handle excess, whether in people's diets or lifestyles, merit reflection. For example, one plausible explanation of the rise in obesity is the decline of the family meal — at which children might be urged to “eat more,” but also would likely be told when they had eaten “more than enough.” In today's eat-and-run culture, people increasingly tend to consume food free from fear of a disapproving gaze. Individuals eat alone, and societies get fat together.
While there is no simple solution to today's dietary woes, we can take a collective decision to reconsider not just what we eat, but our approach to eating, and to recognize the inherent value in eating together. A shared meal might be good for you as well as good.

The idea of ‘coastal cuisine’ brings to mind images of seared fish, prawn curries and lobsters on a platter. But the strong vegetarian tradition in India has ensured that vegetables ­­— and even fruits — are incorporated into the cuisines that develop along India’s coast.
We had the opportunity to try out some of these dishes during the Coastal Cuisine food festival at ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. While my non-vegetarian colleagues couldn’t resist the fish and prawns, I headed straight to the vegetarian counter.
The most interesting dish was the mambazha pulisseri, a sweet and sour alphonso curry. While the use of raw fruits — such as banana and jackfruit — isn’t unheard of, curries made with ripe fruits are unique to coastal regions.
“The sauce in the mambazha pulisseri is made with coconut, green chillies and cumin. Curd is then added to give it volume,” says chef Harish, who had flown in from Dakshin, the south Indian restaurant at ITC Chennai, to attend the festival. The resulting dish had a creamy texture, and the sweetness of the mango was balanced out by the spices.
Another fruit-based curry on the menu was the Pineapple Mensakai, which has its origins in the Mangalore region in Karnataka. This sweet and spicy dish is a must at any traditional Kannadiga feast today.
Most of these vegetarian fruit-based curries originated in coastal areas, but over the years, their popularity has increased in the interiors too, says Harish.
He adds that he’s looking forward to experimenting with palm fruit. “I have heard that people in and around Pondicherry prepare dishes with this fruit. I will be heading there soon to study their local cuisine.”

The Maharana of Udaipur, Shriji Arvind Singhji Mewar, is a dedicated foodie who rolls up his sleeves and cooks up a storm himself from time to time. And it is in that spirit he tells me that all these celeb chefs we see on TV these days leave him cold.
Today, you can get everything under the sun in a mall, he points out. But in the old days, the rasodas in his palace had to make do with what was available locally and seasonally. And in a desert region like Mewar, there wasn’t much to work with in the best of times. To create delicacies fit for a king from whatever little was available called for some real skills, which the rasodas developed out of sheer necessity. “Just restrict the ingredients available to a master chef on a TV show, and then see what he can do with them,” suggests the Maharana.
That will have to wait. For now, we can see how the rasodas coped with scarcity. Take the Panchkuta, a dish made with five dried vegetables — in the desert, most things are dried and used through the off-season. Bauliya, ker, sangari, kumat and ber spiced with amchoor, coriander, turmeric and salt are sautéed in mustard oil seasoned with cumin seeds. The result is unique, wholesome and tasty enough for a second helping, I discovered at a Mewari dinner presented by Chef Surjan Singh Jolly of the Renaissance hotel in Powai, Mumbai. Chef Jolly had spent time with Shriji Arvind Singhji Mewar in his Udaipur palace as well as with the Bhils and Kathodias of that region who still follow traditional ways of hunting, gathering and cooking.
What Chef Jolly was drawn to, in both the tribal hamlets and the royal kitchen, was the simplicity in their methods which preserved the nutrients as well as the natural taste of whatever they cooked. There was the Kathodia Ghara Kokada, chicken mashed with all its bones (to preserve the calcium in them) and cooked in a clay pot with crushed garlic, red chilli, salt and buttermilk. And the Khada Palak, which simply had baby spinach leaves sautéed in ghee with cumin, chilli and salt. Quick roasting kept the vegetables crunchy, while slow cooking of meat in clay pots or on stone brought out all the flavours without destroying the nutrients.
The royal kitchens on their part refined these methods with the inventiveness of their master rasodas. They had to, because each royal household wanted to outdo the other at royal banquets. It was a matter of prestige, and the potentate would usually leave detailed instructions in the kitchen on what was expected. Udaipur’s present-day Maharana — “the last fossil rattling around,” as he puts it — developed his culinary passion in this sort of environment. But today, how many households even sit down at a dining table to have a meal together, he asks. It’s usually a takeaway or a restaurant for dinner, and the kids are obsessed with pasta. He is happy that his 16-year-old grand-daughter, who was home for a holiday from boarding school, spent most of her time in the kitchen. So is she going to be off pasta after this? “Unfortunately not,” says the Maharana of Udaipur indulgently.

Ingredients:
l 5 boiled potatoes
l 2 boiled beet root
l 1½ cup freshly grated coconut
l 1/2 cup coriander
l 2 green chillies
l 2 slices of bread
l 1 small bowl of semolina (suji)
l Salt as per taste

Method:
l Mash the boiled potatoes and add two
slices of bread to it. Add salt as per taste
and mix it well. Then grate the beetroot and coconut as per above measurement. In a frying pan, put 1 tablespoon oil. When the
oil gets hot add cut green chilles and beet root. Cook for five minutes. When it is dry
add freshly grated coconut and coriander.
Fry for two minutes and leave it to cool.
Make balls of mashed potatoes and flatten to circle on your palm. Fill it with the beet and coconut filling made earlier. Then roll in semolina and deep fry in hot oil till golden brown. Serve with green mint and coriander chutney.

Ingredients:
l Six slices of white bread
l For sugar syrup: l 2 bowls sugar
l 2 cups water l 3 -4 strands of saffron
l For milk rabdi:
l 1 litre milk
l 1 small pack – Doodh masala
l Dry fruit (cashews, pistachios and almonds) finely chopped for garnishing
l 2-3 strands of saffron
l 1 cup sugar

Method:
l In a heavy bottom vessel reduce the 1 litre milk to 1/4th. Put the strands of saffron. Keep stirring continuously while milk is reducing. Once the milk has reduced, put the doodh masala and sugar. Stir for few minutes and leave it to cool to normal temperature. Then refrigerate it. In another frying pan, put oil and deep fry the bread slices till they turn golden brown. In another vessel boil two cups of water with sugar and saffron. Boil till sugar melts and it becomes slightly thick. Once syrup is ready leave it to cool. Before serving, dip bread in the syrup and remove it immediately. Keep it for 5 minutes on a serving plate. Put the rabdi (milk mixture) on this bread. Garnish with finely chopped dry fruits and serve cold.

When the rain gods smile on us, what could be better than sipping a hot cuppa adhrak chai and gorging on some crispy pakodas? Four Points by Sheraton in Navi Mumbai understands your tastes, and brings to you the Chai Pakoda Festival, where you can enjoy a platter of not just pakodas but other street treats like chaat and pav bhaji.
“For many, the monsoon means enjoying hot cups of tea along with bhajiyas and chaat. However, these are usually served at roadside vendors that are extremely unhygienic, especially during this season considering the susceptibility of people to ailments. We wanted to create an ambience and better variety for people this monsoon,” said Arbind Singh, food and beverage manager, Four Points by Sheraton.
The star hotel has created a beautiful ambience, with rain-themed pictures and paintings put up on the glass windows of their coffee shop, Wrapped. The venue is such that people can enjoy their ‘hygienic’ delicacies and also the rains.
Choose from the all time favourite kanda and batata bhaji (prepared from onion and potato respectively), nutritious palak pakodas (prepared from spinach) or mirch pakodas (made from chillis) which is delightful for chilly evenings. And that’s not all! Treat yourself at the chaat counter — chatpata paani puri, crispy sev puri, tangy dahi puris; isn’t your mouth already watering?
Soft butter-laden pavs served with spicy bhaji are simply awesome here. The star hotel has also designed a special menu that has all the festival items in it, including a variety of pakodas, chaat items and pav bhaji. And don’t miss the range of chai which includes every possible flavour from masala, ginger to lemon, elaichi, etc.
The makeshift roadside tea stall set up at the coffee shop adds to the overall experience. The stall has a wide range of cookies, nankhatais and biscuits similar to the roadside vendor selling cutting chai and other goodies. You can enjoy you favourite flavour of tea while it is freshly prepared at the stall either in a mud tumbler or glass.
So, what are you waiting for? Head to Four Points by Sheraton and enjoy some simmering hot tea with tasty pakodas.