Cooking with 1 Teaspoon of oil
March 29, 2010Author: Tarla Dalal
Publisher: Sanjay & CO
Pages: 160
Price: Rs 250
Reviewed by Eisha Sarkar
A look at the paneer rolls wrapped in lettuce leaves on the cover of this book leaves you wanting for more. When it comes to tempting your taste-buds tastefully, India’s cooking queen knows it best. And this time, she promises to deliver with just one teaspoon of oil. Yes, you read it right – just one teaspoon.
It’s a promise well kept. For Dalal does more than just cut down oil from her recipes. “Cooking with 1 teaspoon of oil is virtually unthinkable when we speak about Indian food, because large amounts of fats like ghee, cream, butter and oil are used to prepare our daily meals… You’d be surprised that all such recipes that serve four portions can be cooked using one teaspoon of oil, while retaining their traditional taste and flavour,” she writes in the book’s introduction.
Dalal then runs through a series of tips about eating healthy and weight-loss. She asks you to set a realistic target to lose weight, record everything you can eat in a book and even reward your short-term weight loss goal with a movie (minus the popcorn, that is). And then she starts off with muesli. It comes as a surprise. A typical cookbook wouldn’t start with one of the most common breakfast cereals around the world. But this isn’t a typical cookbook. Dalal focusses on health and she makes it clear that the breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Of course, if muesli isn’t your idea of breakfast, you can choose from the nutritious stuffed idlis, protein-packed poha (with sprouts), mag na dhokla and vegetable corn bake that Dalal serves up. For snacks she stresses on baking methi muthias instead of frying them, baking chaklis with just ’1 teaspoon oil to near perfection’ and even a low-cal chivda. She offers a platter of vegetable biryani, healthy oondhiya, paneer palak koftas in makhani gravy (yes, makhani without butter or cream), soya mutter pulao, tandoori mushrooms and more. And for desserts she recommends you tuck into low-fat kulfi with strawberry sauce (that contains just 10 teaspoons of sugar), sweet potato puranpoli or fruit sandesh.
Though Dalal has done well to add the nutritive values per serving, it would have been better if she would have given a comparison between a regular serving of a dish, say biryani, and her 1-teaspoon version of the same. Also, not all the recipes require the use of oil. So, if you’re expecting the same, you may be a little disappointed for Dalal has included recipes for coolers, desserts and salads as well.
Nevertheless, reading this book will be a positive step towards a healthy diet. Whether you use her recipes or not, you might just stick to the ‘half a litre of oil per person per month’ she recommends. Bon appetit!
