Chef Srijani from The Park recently conducted a session on how to reduce fat from traditional Holi preparations. Iknoor Kaur reports
Khoya, oil, sugar and fat sum up the coming few days filled with colour, joy, happiness and a lot of sweetness. An Indian festivity is a nightmare for all diet freaks.Gujias, pedas, thandai and kheer come to mind when you think Holi. At such a time, what is it you do to avoid all that fatIJ Chef Srijani from The Park gave us a solution at a recent cookout session at Cha Bar. “The key is to not make your food too sweet. All other flavours in a sweet get overpowered when you add too much of sugar,” she shared.
Srijani prepared four things that are synonymous to the festival of colours. The first in the list was thandai. She mixed kesar and elaichi with milk in a bowl, stirred it till it mixed well and then refrigerated the milk for a bit. While she took it out of the refrigerator, she explained, “Many people serve thandai like this but it is always better to add more flavour. An almond-pistachio paste can do wonders. You just need to beat the paste well once you put it in the milk. With the addition of this, the additional sweetness that people add in the thandai is not needed because the flavours are plenty. People relish the subtle sweetness.”
Next up was namkeen. The process for this was simple. The first step was to make the dough. Srijani used flour, salt, oil and ajwain in appropriate proportions to make the dough hard. “For 500 gms of flour one should use around 150 ml water and lots of oil. This makes the dough hard and the namkeen crispy,” she said. Once the dough was ready she rolled the dough flat till it was paper thin and cut out the desired shape of the namkeen. After that she fried it in moderate temperature oil. She added that if the oil is too hot, the inside of the dough can stay uncooked and soft.
After namkeens, the sweet trail began. Now were the dishes that weren’t meant for the diet conscious people. The most famous sweet of Holi, gujia was up for preparation. Again dough was needed to be prepared. However, this time the dough consisted of oil, water and maida. “There is no sugar mixed in the dough. The sugar comes only in the end and maybe a little in the stuffing,” said Srijani. The stuffing consisted of khoya, coconut, dry fruit and “a pinch of sugar. Ingredients like khoya are very heavy but are unavoidable in such preparations. But that is the reason sugar is cut down. However, one can’t take away the calories from a dish like this,” added the chef. Once the stuffing was rolled into the dough, it was fried on low flame so that the colour of the gujia remains the same. Srijani informed that in most cases, the gujia tends to develop different shades and look bad. The gujia wasn’t ready after frying. There was indulgence that came after that as Srijani dipped the fried gujias in sugar syrup for 15 minutes. “This is for the sweetness, but can be avoided by people who don’t like sweet. But since the consistency of the sugar syrup is one string, there is not much sweetness that seeps in the gujia. To get this kind of consistency, you need to mix 150-200 gms of sugar in one litre of water,” she elaborated.
That was not enough of khoya because what came next was the colourful peda. Srijani explained the process, “First we should put sugar and khoya in a cold pan. Then put it on the flame and continuously stir it so that the khoya doesn’t burn. Stir it till the time the khoya becomes sticky. For colour, one can either use organic colours available in the market or use beetroot and spinach. You can make a paste of the beetroot or spinach and then strain it and put it in the khoya. This makes sure that the taste is not affected. Once the khoya is sticky, you can mould it in the desired shape.” Most of the times pedas sold in the market are hard and crispy. However, this was soft. Srijani said that this was because people tend to add flour and rice flour in the khoya.
The last preparation was gulab ki kheer. “This kheer is the same as any other kheer except that instead of rice, you put rose petals in it. The petals just need to be washed and put in the milk. The proportion of milk to the petals should be two is to one,” she summed up.