My aunt cooked Indian food that was out of this world. She was not a professional cook, but her home cooking was professional quality. She only knew how to cook Bengali Indian food; rice, curry, greens, dal, fish, hand-made bread, lamb, prawn, and rarely, desserts or fruit chutney.
I learned a lot of my dishes from her. I got the basics and then I added my own style and flavor.
One common thing I noticed between my aunt’s home cooking and my cooking is our focus on the health benefits of the food we prepare. She never used artificial flavor or color, she never used preservatives and she always used fresh vegetables, fish or meat. In Calcutta or Bengal back in those days, we never knew anything that was not organic. Now that I live here in Brooklyn, New York I still always use organic ingredients. It makes a big difference when it comes to the quality of my preparations.
Many Westerners don’t realize that Indian food can be healthy and delicious at the same time, but I can’t blame them for not knowing. Most Indian restaurants you visit — whether in New York, New Jersey, London, Rome or Paris — serve food that is quite tasty but high in sugar, fat and cholesterol. Plus, many of these restaurants use ingredients that fill you up instantly, and you feel heavy and overstuffed as soon as you get out of the restaurant. You feel lazy and don’t want to do anything for the next few hours; your energy level takes a big hit.
Eating this variety of Indian food drastically reduces one’s longevity. Your altered metabolism does not help your heart and other vital organs. Eating food made out of genetically modified crops is also a sure way to developing life-threatening diseases. Therefore, I’d strongly recommend that you opt for the healthy-and-delicious variety of Indian food.
Of course, I’m biased about my own cooking and my home-based little entrepreneurship Mukti’s Kitchen. But honestly, I’m asking you to seek out the differences between run-of-the-mill Indian cuisine and a real, authentic Indian cooking. A visit to Mukti’s Kitchen to learn real, home-based Indian cuisine at it’s finest will not only change your outlook on Indian food, but you’ll learn to prepare meals that help keep you healthy.
In fact, once you master the art of home-based Indian cuisine, with its wonderful spices and aromas, you’ll start to feel the benefits. You’ll notice a decrease in your anxiety and stress levels which creates a peaceful state of being. And this is the key to live a longer, happier life; a lifestyle free of stress, anxiety and fear. Try it – you’ll like it.