Diwali, the festival of light, is equally the festival of food. Cooking all sorts of snacks, desserts, and the traditional Indian cuisine. Visiting your family and friends, and inviting them over to your place. Most of us are in such high spirits in the festive feel that we tend to forget everything about our weight and health. All this is side tracked and once diwali is over, we realise that we better start working towards it.
Here are some simple cooking tips that make traditional cuisine healthier and help you to avoid the diet extremes during diwali:
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Moong dal halwa: Moong dal halwa is one of the most popular diwali dessert. If you are trying to lose weight, it can easily put you a few steps behind because of the amount of ghee used in its preparation. However, there are few ways you can use to reduce amount of ghee used and enjoy it without the guilt feeling:
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Using microwave to make this halwa will substract a lot of extra teaspoons of ghee that we add while roasting the grounded moong dal batter.
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If you don't have a microwave, there is another option. Ground the raw dal a day before and add 2 teaspoon of ghee. Mix it well and keep it in a container. Next day, roast the flour. Less ghee will be required as the dry mix requires less ghee in comparison to the wet batter for getting roasted.
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Atta halwa (wheat flour fudge): Similar to moong dal halwa, you can use microwave to cook this halwa in order to reduce the amount of ghee used while roasting. Also, you can use multigrain atta to make this halwa healthier.
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Dahi vada: While frying the vada, don't make them into balls as it will take longer to cook, and longer the balls are in the oil, more is the amount of oil absorbed. Instead, you can flatten the batter on your palm and then fry it. This being thin will not take too long to get fried, and the amount of oil absorbed can be reduced. After frying, press the vada on a tissue paper to remove the excess oil and then soak it in the water. To make it even more healthy, use low fat curd for dressing.
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Chakli/murukku: Generally, gram flour (besan) or rice flour is used to make this savoury snack. To make this dish healthier, multigrain flour can be used. Also, baking them in a microwave for one minute at 400 W will half cook them without any oil, hence reducing the frying time and the amount of oil absorbed.
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Vegetable canapes: Canapes are small decorative food, made with a base of bread or toast or crackers, and topped with an assortment of small, usually savory toppings such as meat, cheese and fish. You can serve your guest these canapes with fruit, sprout or salad toppings. They are healthier as well as a tasty snack with absolutely no fat.
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Gujia: Gujia is one of the most populat traditional sweet that can be made healthy by baking them in microwave instead of deep frying. Keep gujia on a greased baking tray, brush with little ghee and bake at 1800 degree Celcius for 20-25 minutes. The stuffing can also be made healthier by adding dates and figs (anjeer).
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Kheer/Payasam: Kheer is a healthy sweet as deep frying is not required. Apart from rice & vermicelli, kheer can be made by whole wheat, broken wheat (dalia), lentils such as mung dal (split mung dal) or chana dal, vegetables such as carrots, bottle gourd (lauki) etc. You can also experiment with brown rice or makhanna which are low in calories and healthy. Most of the kheers are milk based but for South Indian payasam recipes, coconut milk can be used instead of dairy milk.
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Cookies: To make cookies, normally refined flour (maida) is used. Replace it with oatmeal flour, and in place of milk use soy milk to make it healthy.
