The man who is said to have invented the dish died on 22nd December 2022 at the age of 77 years. His name was Ali Ahmed Aslam and he was a Glassgow restaurateur. He migrated to Britain when he was 16.
Mr. Ali Ahmed Aslam
He belonged to Lahore and his family was into farming. His uncle was in Britain doing tailors shop. But Ali was ambitious and soon opened an eatery in Glasgow serving typical tandoori food of Indian subcontinent. With time and exceptional success it became a restaurant with name Shish Mahal.
How did he invented the recipe which became the National dish of the Britain? Well, he says that one driver came to his eatery and asked for Chicken Tikka. But he said the dish was too spicy and dry. As he is not feeling well, he wanted something mild and sweeter. Mr Ali took the chicken tikka and added to it tomato puree and cream. Thus was born the iconic dish which became a rage in Britain.
Karela aka Bitter gourd is bitter but it is a storehouse of vitamins and minerals. Bitter gourd contains iron, magnesium, vitamins, and potassium. The calcium and potassium content in it is twice that of spinach and banana.
Are you surprised to know that it is not a vegetable but a fruit. It belongs to the family of Melons which are known for their sweetness and are popular all over the world. It is called “BITTER MELON“
Karela is a native of Indian subcontinent and now it has been established that it contains a insulin like compound polypeptide-p which helps in regulating the blood sugar.
Karela contains potassium which helps to reduce the blood pressure by replacing some of the sodium responsible for increasing blood pressure.
It improves the skin and hair. It is rich in antioxidants, vitamins A and C.
Even USA is going to take its farming in a big way recognising it’s benefits.
Perhaps when God was distributing goodness to the family of Melons, all the sweetness was bestowed upon its brothern. It was feeling sad as it’s taste was very bitter and it was ruing the fact that due to the bitter taste nobody will like it.
But God blessed it and said “My son, I can’t make you sweet but i will bless you with so many nutrients and medicinal properties that you will outshine all your siblings and become a darling of the human beings”
Banana is the most consumed fruit in the world. It is very easy to eat. Just peel and eat. It is an instant source of energy. Sportsmen love it. It can be eaten in the form of milkshakes or as such. It is any time fruit.
Banana and Plantains look very similar. But in fact they have some subtle differences which make them suitable for different food recipes. Nutritionally there is not much difference between them. Plantains grow in Central Africa, the Caribbean, and other tropical regions, and they’re commonly used in Latin, African, and Caribbean cuisine.
As the bananas and Plantains begin ripening their colours start changing from green to yellow to black. Sweetness also increases in the same way.
Plantains are longer in size than Bananas. A plantain is almost double (12″) as compared to a banana (about 6″). Plantains are used mostly as a vegetable rather than as a fruit. When raw, both bananas and Plantains are bland. Sweetness increases as they begin to mature. When fully ripe, Plantains are more sweeter than Bananas.
Sugar in the Plantains comes from starch. As starches take longer to breakdown into simple sugar they are initially less sweeter than Bananas. But since starches are complex sugars, they yield more simpler sugars.
Because ripe bananas are sweet, they are usually used in dessert recipes or baked goods, including banana bread, muffins, and cupcakes, often with chocolate chips thrown in. Chips are eaten as snacks.
Bananas are richer in many vitamins and minerals but due to their sugar base rather than starch base, user especially people with diabetes cannot overindulge in their consumption.
Sugars are carbohydrates. Carbohydrates break down into Glucose and Fructose. Fructose are the sugars which we obtain from the fruits. Glucose is instantly assimilated into our bodies and provides instant energy. Fructose on the other hand take time to break down and get absorbed into bloodstream.
Sugar is obtained mostly from sugarcane, beets and Palm. Each has many minerals during unprocessed stage which provide more nutrients as well as imparts colour to the sugar which is white.
Most of the world consumes processed sugar which don’t contain any molasses from which it is made by removing all the molasses. It is done to make the product look more aesthetic and also for use in foods where the brownish colour is not desirable. It is just like the polished rice versus unpolished rice.
Turbinado Sugar:
Turbinado sugar is minimally processed sugar. It contains more molasses. It has larger crystals and is more dryer in nature. So it’s solubility is lower than normal white sugar. It is mostly used in hot beverages.
Brown sugar is obtained by adding a controlled amount of molasses in the white sugar. First of all molasses is stripped off to make the molasses free colourless sugar and then molasses is added in the desired amounts. It has smaller crystals but more moisture as compared to Turbinado sugar. It is used in food preparations where sugar is supposed to dissolve into the food homogeneously and evenly like cakes.
For a man who barely gets enough to eat, dieting is irrelevant. For farmer who works all day in the fields, no dieting is required.
Whatever food we eat gives us energy. Energy is required for doing work. So when the intake of calories is more than the spending the amount of energy by means of exercise, walking and other physical activity, the remaining amount of energy gets deposited in the body in the form of fat. Over the time, than body weight will go on increasing. The energy group foods are fat and carbohydrate. Our bodies have evolved in such a way that their first choice is sugar or carbohydrate followed by fat in the form of saturated oils.
Most people who wish to shed the extra pounds, go for exercise and dieting. These diets contain generally more proteins and cut down on the carbohydrates and fats and sodium. Also most of the obese people are those who are generally well off and have occupations which involve very less manual activity. As the time passes by, many ailments take over, forcing such people to go to doctors, dieting and exercise. They want quick results which are unattainable causing frustration.
Many smart health experts take advantage of this and float different types of diet plans with exotic names. There are at least more than dozen such plans. Some of these are Mediterranean diet, Ketogenic diet, Low-carbohydrate diet, Intermittent fasting, Veganism, Vegetarianism, Plant-based diet, South Beach Diet, raw food diet, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig Low-fat diet, Dukan Diet, Mayo Clinic Diet, WW International Nutrisystem, Whole30 , Alkaline diet, Blood type diet, Diabetic diet, Cabbage soup diet, Zone diet, Atkins diet, Flexitarian.
Paleo or Caveman Diet
One such diet plan is called Paleo Diet. Also called Caveman’s Diet. It’s based on food sources for humans during the Paleolithic area, which spanned the time period of about 2.5 million years to 10,000 years ago.
caveman
From the name, you can guess the type of things one has to eat or avoid. Caveman was our primitive ancestor who barely knew the recipes and ate whatever came his way. He didn’t know agriculture. Although he had learnt to make fire.
He was essentially a hunter and survived on the animal flesh which means that he consumed more protein rich diet with minimal processing. At the most he was roasting the animal. Secondly he ate fruits and flowers and whatever grains were growing naturally.
So the Paleo Diet plans stresses on eating animal proteins, fish, lean meat, fruits, nuts, eggs, and cereals. It rules out eating the dairy products like milk and milk based products like cheese, potatoes, butter, and curds etc. It also emphasis on inclusion of critical ingredients like vitamins and minerals.
Naturally Paleo Diet will be costlier to other diets. Also from the energy point of view whatever food plan you follow, you have to side by side reduce the already deposited extra fats. So exercise is a must along with the dieting. Caveman didn’t have many worries like modern man. Most of his time was spent chasing the animals for hunting and fishing with not efficient tools. So he was always exercising his body.
I doubt that with this type of strenuous physical routine the caveman would have become overweight even after eating the fat from the animals. These diet plans all boil down to the fact that if the intake of the calories is offset by spending those calories through physical exercise and activity leaving a slightly negative balance, you will be fit
Past few days, a great proliferation in the numbers and variety of ants could be seen here. Small ants, black and brown ants. They have made holes in the walls, throwing away their residue of black hue out of the walls.
Thousands of them can be seen moving to and fro. They are everywhere: on the walls, clothes, bedsheets. Once an ant went inside my eye. If the lid of any container is even slightly loose, the ants waste no time for going inside. They seem to be on some suicide mission.
They drown in the milk, they move gas stoves and get killed or burned. The menace has become too much to handle.
They are moving in twin directions on a designated path marked by them. The ants moving is opposite directions seem momentarily to kiss each other as if conveying some secret about the food. After this they continue their journey.
Even on the road you can see the trodden path patterns made by the ants army while crossing the road from one side to another. The sheer number of these ants is so high that their path resembles a thick rope spread across the road.
They can be seen walking everywhere: kitchen, beds, on human bodies, walls, bathrooms. If you are too sensitive type, you shall become frustrated.
Can we imagine any food without salt? In addition to the taste it adds, salt is an essential nutrient for the human body. It is an electrolyte which helps the transmission of the messages from different parts of the body to the brain and vice versa. It is present in the cells.
Any imbalance in its concentration whether in the form of deficiency or excess can play havoc with our body. When dehydration occurs, the salt has to be replenished by the intake of oral rehydration solution. It is lost from our bodies during perspiration and blood becomes thicker and our bodies require water.
In addition salt is used as preservative for pickles and other foods. It acts as a barrier to the bacteria which attack the food and decompose it.
Salt comes from the evaporation of the seawater collected in the salt pans. After water evaporates the salt is left behind which is then made to undergo the processes of purification. Those who live in the urban areas and especially near sea coasts never feel it’s importance.
But still there are people living in the remote areas where access to this commodity is impossible. Some of such communities live in Kenya. These tribes, as the saying goes : “Necessity is the mother of invention ” has developed a way to compensate this by extracting the salts from the Reed Stalks.
Technique
Bunches of river reed are cut into smaller pieces and dried on the hot stones for about a period of 3 days to reduce the inherent moisture. Then the stalks are put on very slow fire. When organic ingredients burn, the ash is left behind. Ash is collected and boiled with water and filtered to get pure salts dissolved in the filtrate while impurities are left behind. The filtrate is then boiled till only the salt is left behind. Sometimes they add a pinch of pepper powder to add flavor to it.
According to Bob Drane, former vice president for new business strategy and development at Oscar Mayer, human brain craves for Sugar, Fat and Salt.
So food products which make use these ingredients help in gluing the customer and “Our limbic brains love sugar, fat, salt.… So formulate products to deliver these. Perhaps add low cost ingredients to boost profit margins.
Then “super size” to sell more.… And advertise/promote to lock in “heavy users.” —Bob Drane, former vice president for new business strategy and development at Oscar Mayer.
From this statement, it is clear that foods containing Sugar, Fat and Salt appeal most to the human brain. Armed with this knowledge, the fast food companies design feel good foods and hook so many of us, particularly, the younger generation.
It is the right combination of these that is important. The malaise of obesity is the result of those extra pounds generally come from the over consumption of soft drinks, snack foods, and fast foods.
Of course, the food companies do not want their customers obese because in that case they may start avoiding the fast food. But they want the “stomach share” in the food market.
But processed-food companies increasingly turn to their legions of scientists to produce foods that we can’t resist. These food geeks tweak their products by varying the levels of the three so-called pillar ingredients—salt, sugar, and fat.
Junk food
It turns out that although we generally do like such food more but after a certain intake, we like to take less. That optimum amount of salt, sugar, or fat is called the “Bliss Point”.
Scientists also adjust these ingredients as well as factors such as crunchiness to produce a mouth feel—that is, the way the food feels inside a person’s mouth—that causes consumers to crave more.
Technologists can also induce a flavor burst by altering the size and shape of the salt crystals themselves so that they basically assault the taste buds into submission.
The formula of successful junk-food science is the vanishing calorific density. Such food melts in your mouth so quickly that the brain is fooled into thinking it’s hardly consuming any calories at all, so it just keeps snacking.
In the process, packaged-food scientists want to avoid triggering sensory-specific satiety, the brain mechanism that tells you to stop eating when it has become overwhelmed by big, bold flavors.
Instead, the real goals are either passive overeating, which is the excessive eating of foods that are high in fat because the human body is slow to recognize the caloric content of rich foods, or auto-eating: that is, eating without thinking or without even being hungry. (The opposite problem is being overhungry, where you’re so ravenous that you’ll basically eat anything that’s put in front of you.)
Either way, if you end up with a food baby, a distended stomach caused by excessive overeating, you’ve made a fast-food executive somewhere very happy.
All this is explored by Pulitzer award winning Journalist Michael Moss in his book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Companies Hooked Us”
Energy is required to make food. Whether we feed cows to produce milk or apples from the trees, energy is required in different forms from the beginning to end. The apple might be an emblem of simplicity, but accounting for all the energy needed to produce one is another matter.
You have to factor in pesticide production, fertilizer manufacturing, irrigation, harvesting, sorting, and transportation. Electricity and diesel fuel are needed to drive all these steps, and coal mining and oil extraction come with their own energy costs. And that’s just the apple. Here is a list of some items of foods in Sweden.
Eggs
Even specially bred hens for this purpose convert food to eggs with only 15-20% efficiency. To produce 1 kilogram of eggs the energy required is 18 Mega Joules.
Shelled Shrimp, wild
High energy cost comes from fuel required to run a shrimp boat. Energy required for 1 Kg of Shrimp when it reaches your home is 220 Mega Joules
Apples
Fuel required in importing adds to the energy cost. But lower perishing rate means that they can be transported by cheaper means like ship. Energy required for 1 Kg of apples when it reaches your home is 8.6 Mega Joules
Requirement of food for dairy cows is far less than cows reared for meat. Milk energy requirement makes it most efficient. Energy required for 1 Kg of milk when it reaches your home is 5 Mega Joules
Note: These calculations refer to the energy requirements for these products in Sweden in September 2013
How often do we leisurely watch the nature around us? General answer will be not often. Do we sit out in the evening and watch the sun going down, its glow becoming golden, and shadows lengthening and blinking through the chinks in the trees? Do we watch the groups of birds flying towards their homes after spending their day in a far off place where the food is available to forage?
Why, in the first place, they don’t make their resting places near the food. May be the supply is not available at one place throughout the year and their resting places are at optimum distance from the foraging places. Why do they always fly in the groups? Is not their pressure or competition for food? Is the father of Evolution theory listening?
After reeling under the sweltering heat for many days, if there is rain, it is like a fresh breath of life. The parched land is drenched with water pushing out the air filled with earth’s aromas into the atmosphere and filling our nostrils with ecstasy. The accompanying wind rushes into the branches which sway from side to side at the top such as in the mighty silver oak trees.
One wonders how the topmost leaves are receiving their requirement of water and nutrients. In optimistic hope of supply from the soil, additionally they must be conserving the water by reducing their stomata counts, As they are in the top, they have the benefit of plenty of sunlight. I also wonder if the leaves at the top are in any sort of communication with those at the lower branches.
Rain patters on the tins of roofs. Water begins to flow over the soil surface seeking places which are at lower level to become pooled there. The dust on the leaves which was choking the plants breath is washed up and translucency returns. Sometimes after the rain, sun comes out and everything shines resplendently. The weather becomes bearable.
