Admit it. You haven’t been able to resist making a few resolutions and I’m willing to bet that most of them have to do with losing weight, being healthy, keeping your temper... And you’re also going to have to admit that there’s a sense of déjà vu with the breaking of the resolutions. And it’s only January 2!
Ayurvedic wisdom suggests that the winter months are a good time to strengthen your body’s resources while the monsoons are a good time to detox. Ayurveda didn’t have a party calendar though. If you’re suffering from eating till you’re sick or drinking till you’re silly, this coming week is a great time to do some gastro-fire-fighting. Warm, flavoured teas are great for the mind and body. The raw food soup and vegetable and fruit juice will power you up.
The most fun is the pancake. The Japanese word for hangover is ‘futsukayoi’ or drunk for two days. If you party hard though, you may even graduate to a ‘mitsukayoi’ or three-day drunkenness. Either way, the pancake ought to do the trick. Make the batter before you leave to party so there’s not much prep in the morning after. Then eat it. And promise to be good to your poor body this year!
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Parsley Mint Lemongrass Tea
I first drank this at the breakfast buffet of the Pune ashram of a controversial guru known for his rather risqué take on all things spiritual. Not a follower, there for a newspaper story, I’ll have to say though that this tea and the tahini on rye bread may have skewed my objectivity a bit. I came back to Mumbai to write a glowing, gushing report that had my editor look at me suspiciously and laughingly accuse me of having been secretly inducted. I wasn’t. But the tea is great.
Ingredients
1 cup of the freshest parsley
1 cup of the crispest mint
½ tsp of lemongrass root or 2/3 blades of lemongrass
4 cups of water on the boil
Honey to taste
Method
Wash the parsley and mint thoroughly. Don’t clean the leaves off the stalks — throw the entire bunch into boiling water along with the lemongrass. Lower the heat and half-cover the pot and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes. (If you like your mint flavour stronger, you could also use a good quality mint infusion or teabag dipped in for a few seconds.) You will get a lovely pale tea that is subtle but very refreshing. I like it with a tiny teaspoon of honey and some fresh mint as garnish.
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Super Spinach Soup
Detox plans are big on soup. I love a big giant bowl of miso with loads of colourful vegetables, seaweed and tofu bobbing in the steamy cloudiness of it all. But it can get boring. This is a lovely, easy alternative. All you have to do is do the light prep the previous night and throw everything into the food processor in the morning or make it for a power brunch.
Ingredients
1 cup boiling water
1 bunch of spinach
2 spring onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 cucumbers
½ red or green pepper
½ avocado
3 teaspoons ground almonds
Juice of 2 lemons
1 chopped green chilli (optional)
Fresh coriander leaves (optional)
Method
Wash the vegetables very, very well, especially the spinach. Roughly tear up the spinach (keep the more tender stalks) and blanch in the boiling water. When wilted, blend the spinach and avocado together till smooth, then add the rest of the vegetables, lemon juice and the ground almonds. Heat in the microwave for not more than a minute if you must. Too much heat will dilute its
goodness.
The soup has a lovely Indian accent to it and if you want, you could throw in blanched moong sprouts, tamarind chutney and some steamed potatoes for a hearty, healthy meal.
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Orange Peel Detox Tea
While researching recipes for detox teas, I came across this very Indian blend of spices. We brewed it and the potion was passed around a household still groaning from the excesses of Christmas. Result? The tea made us break into a sweat and soothed a couple of sore throats. It’s also supposed to calm the tummy and work as an energiser. It’s quite robust though and tastes like tough love at Christmas, so brace
yourself.
Ingredients
The peel of 1 orange
3 tsps grated ginger
½ cup of parsley
Cardamom seeds from 2 pods
4 black peppercorns
4 cm stick of cinnamon
1 teaspoon fennel seeds or
½ cup chopped fennel leaves
4 cloves
4 cups water
Method
Clean the pith off the orange peel or you will get a bitter brew. This is easily done by scraping the inside with a serrated knife. Put 4 cups of water to boil and add the ginger and dry spices. After about 5 minutes, throw in the orange peel and fresh herbs. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes more. Your kitchen will smell heavenly. Strain and drink. You may want to sweeten it with honey or brown sugar.
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Beetroot and pomegranates have such great reputations as cleansers with age defying properties. This juice practically fought its way out of the blender with its antioxidants raging. We tried it both with the pulp and strained. While the pulpy one is probably more roughage-rich, you may as well eat it as a salad. The strained juice is blood red and all the people it was tested on swore they’d drink it every morning — if someone else would make it for them.
Ingredients
1 large cucumber
2 medium sized beets
1 apple
6 red carrots
1 sweet over-ripe pear
2 small radishes
4 thick celery stalks
Juice of 2 lemons
½ cup cranberry or apple juice to sweeten if necessary
Method
Wash and peel the vegetables. Juice them or blend them in a food processor and strain. Add the lemon juice to taste. Serve immediately. Run around like a superhuman all day.
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Okonomiyaki
We can’t talk New Year’s resolutions without mentioning at least one hangover remedy. If you’re squinting and reading this with an aching head, compromised short term memory and desperate dehydration, then this one is for you. There’s all sorts of remedies — tomatoes help flush out toxins, eggs help ease the brain-pain, cornflakes and orange juice apparently make you so sick you’ll never drink again — the list goes on. But I look to the Japanese –— they have a brilliant combination of the Asian intolerance to alcohol and a blatant disregard for it with their binge-drinking habits — making them the hangover champions of the universe!
The hangover remedy market is huge in Japan but one of their favourite post-binge recipes is a delicious pancake that is now becoming quite popular around the world. Nutritious and very versatile by nature, it’s full of vegetables, has stomach-calming carbohydrates and is topped with shrimp or bacon, seaweed, mayo, ketchup or wasabi. It’s very delicious and you don’t have to be mitsukayoi to enjoy it.
Ingredients:
½ cup grated yam
2 cups maida
2 tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp grated ginger
½ cup chopped purple or green cabbage
Nori (seaweed) sheets, shredded
Shrimp or bacon or sliced tofu
Sesame oil
1 large egg
1 cup water, stock or dashi
2 spring onions sliced
Soy sauce, wasabi, mayonnaise, ketchup as optional garnishes
Method
Mix the grated yam, flour, baking powder, grated ginger and salt together. Add the egg and mix well and then slowly add the dashi or water until you have quite a thick batter. In a pan, sauté the cabbage and onions until they are soft. When slightly cool, mix them into the batter. Take half your nori and add that to the batter too. In a separate pan, fry the bacon till crisp. If using either shrimp or tofu, sprinkle a little soy sauce for flavour. Reserve. Heat a skillet up till quite hot and oil it with sesame oil using a muslin cloth or kitchen towel. Pour a generous amount of the batter on (it should be quite thick) and gently shape it into a circle. (You can also do this in a regular frying pan.) Cover for about a minute so that the pancake is slightly steamed then open and cook for another minute. Now throw on the bacon or shrimp or tofu and some nori and flip the pancake over so it crisps up with the toppings on. In about 1 minute flip it over onto a plate. Decorate with wasabi, mayonnaise, more nori. You can also drizzle oyster or soy sauce. While the okonomiyaki can be eaten cold, it’s best eaten hot. Now say sayonara to that hangover.
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