Giving Indian food the health 'tadka'

From dal makhni cooked with milk to lamb made in buttermilk, innovative chefs are modifying traditional Indian recipes to serve the health-conscious consumer.

Chef Sumant Vikas had a challenge on hand — to avoid oil and still come up with a meat preparation that would have the kind of flavour to go into a 5-star menu.

As executive chef at Courtyard by Marriott, Vikas had been receiving feedback with increasing frequency that people wanted healthier alternatives to the usual rich fare. At the same time, he didn’t want to dish out something bland. “You can’t cook meat in just water.

You need fat to get the flavours out. But we wanted to avoid oil,” says Vikas.

His team first tried cooking with curd, but the dishes turned out too sour. Then they decided to use buttermilk, which had just enough fat for the flavour of the meat to leach into it. “At the end, we added coriander puree, which gave it a nice spike,” says Vikas.

Today, chhaas aur dhaniye ka gosht shares menu space with rogan josh, a rich, oily preparation that remains popular. And the health-conscious consumer has a choice. “Our customers want to order dishes which they can perhaps try out at home. Lifestyles too have changed. Some of our customers have to go back to office and work, and they don’t want to sit with a heavy stomach.”

Dal makhni lite
There’s growing awareness too of the dangers of consuming saturated fats and transfats, which is prompting restaurants to offer lighter versions of traditional Indian recipes. Zulficar Kareem, sous chef at the Goa Marriott Resort, for example, got a request to prepare a lighter version of dal makhni from a guest who suggested that he should use milk instead of so much cream.

But changing a recipe is not that straightforward. When Kareem added milk to the dal, the emulsification was not quite right. He solved the problem by first boiling the milk to condense it a little before adding it to the dal. This enabled him to reduce the amount of cream used in the traditional recipe, and he also did away with the topping of butter or cream at the end. “Traditionally, a lot of cream is added to dal makhni to give it a smooth texture. But if you cook it well, the dal lets out a starch which can achieve the same effect,” says Kareem. “Obviously, it is not as rich in taste as the original dal makhni. But it’s not bad, and most important of all, the guest is happy.”

Consumer demands have also gone way beyond low-fat and low-cal options over the last five years, according to K Natrajan, corporate chef at Gateway Hotels. “Initially hotels started offering the usual so-called healthy food. But we also found that guests would read up on the effectiveness of different kinds of food, and we had to keep up with them,” says Natrajan. 

Superfoods
That prompted research into foods with ‘low glycemic index’ (which don’t cause a spike in blood sugar) and ‘superfoods’ (rich in antioxidants and other micro-nutrients). While the menu continues to have a variety of dishes, some are now labelled ‘Active Foods’. These include dishes such as ragi khichdi and barley risotto among many others.   

Sometimes, it’s the lure of the exotic that gives chefs the opportunity to rack up a dish’s health quotient. Take asparagus poriyal and broccoli mussalam, for instance.

Poriyal is a Keralite dish of French beans cooked in a coconut-chilli paste. “We use asparagus instead of French beans, and olive oil instead of coconut oil. Also, we use very little coconut,” says Satej Saigaonkar, chef at Hotel Renaissance.

But isn’t coconut integral to the taste of poriyal? Saigaonkar demonstrates how the recipe can be modified. “I add more of mustard seeds and urad dal than I normally use. This gives extra flavour to the oil, which may not make up for the reduction of coconut, but still it’s quite tasty.”

As for the asparagus, a spoonful of Saigaonkar’s poriyal proved it’s a worthy substitute for French beans. Similarly, broccoli mussalam is a variation of Gobi Mussalam using far less of the heavy cashew nut paste than in the original recipe. Saigaonkar says the very use of broccoli or asparagus changes the expectation of customers — they know it’s a healthier variation of a traditional dish and will taste different.

Regional cuisines
Rather than tinker with old favourites like dal makhni or butter chicken, some chefs prefer to simply tap into regional cuisines for lesser known dishes that are healthier.

The root vegetable arbi, for instance, can be made into a kofta and cooked in a rich, cashew-based gravy. But there’s also a Himachali preparation where the arbi is mashed, given a jeera and ajwain tadka, and cooked in a simple tomato-onion gravy. 

Kareem, who got the idea from a Himachali chef on his team, also attends local cookery classes wherever he is posted. That’s how dishes like mulyachi bhaji (white radish) and tamdi bhaji (red amaranth) made their way into the buffet menu of Goa Marriott.

“These vegetables are rich in iron. Not everyone likes them, but those who are health-conscious get very enthused because you don’t normally get such dishes in 5-star restaurants,” says Kareem.

Vikas often looks for inspiration from his recollections of dishes his mother made. “Gobi gajar mattar, which is on our menu, is something my mother used to make often in our home. It’s a simple dish, light and healthy. Today, if you have a dish on the menu that is cooked home-style, you have a winner."