Adapting
Recipes from your Cookbooks
by
Judith Brown
Most of us have a wide range of ordinary recipe books
acquired over the years or one of the more recent celebrity cookbooks given as
Christmas presents. Certainly many of my friends have a ‘Delia’ tome lurking
somewhere in the kitchen.
A quick glance through most of these books reveals recipes
which hardly conform to the principles of dietary health according to Ayurveda,
often employing unsuitable food combinations and elaborate, long lists of
ingredients that will certainly tax most digestive systems. Menus such as melon
starter, cheesy fish pie followed by creamy banana desert are not considered
unusual.
But this does not mean we should consign our standard
recipe books to the back of the bookshelf. There are many recipes which, with a
little thought, we can adapt to make them more digestible and more suited to our
individual doshic balance (or current imbalance).
This means regarding the recipe as a mere template and
adjusting the ingredients so that the final result is more in tune with your
constitution. Soups are particularly easy to adjust. Soups provide a hot
nourishing and sustaining food to take to work, more suitable for vata types
than cold, raw salads on a chilly winter’s day.
Lets take, as an example a recipe for split pea soup.
225g/8oz/1 cup split peas
3 pints vegetable stock, or water
& 1 stock cube
50g/2oz margarine
1 large onion, chopped
3 sticks celery, chopped
2 leeks, finely sliced
2 med. potatoes, peeled and diced
1 med. carrot finely chopped
Salt and pepper
1. Cook the peas in the stock for
10-15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, melt the margarine and
sauté the onion, celery and leeks for a few minutes.
3. Add to the peas and stock
together with the potatoes and carrot and bring back to the boil.
4. Simmer for 30 minutes.
5. Season well and liquidise until
smooth.
Look at each ingredient. (Consult a food chart found in
many Ayurveda books, if you are not sure of the affect of each item on each
dosha.) Consider the quality of each ingredient and its affect on doshic
balance. Would the end result be heating or cooling? What do your think the
overall affect would be on your constitution?
This soup would probably be fairly acceptable as it is for
pitta and kapha constitutions, but the astringent and cooling properties of the
main ingredient, split peas, will not be easy for vata types.
Here are suggestions for each constitution.
Vata
1. Substitute sweet potatoes for the
white potatoes. (White potatoes can aggravate vata).
2. Replace margarine with ghee or
sunflower oil.
3. Spices: heat the ghee/oil, add ½
tsp ground coriander, ¾-1 tsp ground cumin, pinch of hing (Asafoetida), ½ tsp
black mustard seeds. When the seeds start to pop, stir in ½ tsp turmeric. Stir
well and proceeds with the recipe as normal.
Make sure the split peas, onions and
leeks are really WELL COOKED. (I found that it is better to cook the split peas
for 30 minutes, initially.) Don’t forget to cook the peas in water if you are
using a commercial stock cube as the added salt will prevent them from cooking.
Liquidise thoroughly to a fine puree. For vatas, try serving with a squeeze of
lemon or lemon wedge and wholemeal chappatis.
Pitta.
1. Either sweet or white potatoes
can be used.
2. Replace the margarine with
sunflower oil
3. Spices as follows: 1 tsp ground
coriander, ½ tsp ground cumin, ¼ tsp black mustard seeds (optional), ½ tsp
turmeric, 2 or 3 fresh neem leaves (optional). Proceed as above. Serve with
fresh chopped coriander, rice cakes or chappatis.
Kapha.
1. Use half the quantity of
sunflower oil.
2. Spices: as for vata with the
addition of a bay leaf. NO SALT.
Serve with plenty of black pepper
and no other accompaniment. (Sorry, kaphas, this is a compete meal, not a
starter for you!)
Hope this inspires you to take another look at your recipe
books and see what recipes you can adapt.
©
2006 Judith Brown
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