Cooking in India

Hey folks, sorry for my lack of posts, obviously I am travelling and I am working very long hours here, and to be honest, when I am not working, I just want to spend time with my friends here and explore this wonderful country, so blogging here on MND has not been #1 priority! Sorry about that!

Yesterday I had a chance to cook which was most excellent. I managed to create a 99% MND-approved carb-less meal, and proved tpo my friends that we don’t HAVE to have rice, bread and potatoes with every meal we eat!

We found a butcher selling boneless skinless chicken breast fillets for about £4.50 per kilo (half the price we pay in the UK), which is NOT prohibitively expensive to the Indian wallet. That same butcher was selling chicken thighs, minced lamb, minced chicken, leg of lamb and shoulder of mutton, all at affordable prices. So myth #1, ‘big cuts of good fresh meat are hard to come by out here, and silly expensive’ is not true. Sure, such meat would be beyond the reach of the poorer half of the population, but for anyone wealthy enough to have a PC and be reading my blog, then eating an MND diet in India IS possible.

I cooked an Italian style meal, chicken and veggies in pesto with herbs, it was nice, simple, easy, and tasty. My friends said they loved it and will eat this way often going forwards.

A vegetarian adaptation for MND

When I get home, I am still going to try to piece together a version of MND that fits to a meat-less / vegetarian diet, the best I can, just for your interest. However, India is not the nation of vegetarians I expected, most people that I have encountered (very much in “modern” India) have eaten some meat and certainly fish.

Interestingly, they do not use the term vegetarian out here. It seems that eating a meat-less diet is still considered the norm. So as a comparison, when you look at the menu in a restaurant in the UK, it is assumed that every meal contains meat or fish unless it states “V” for vegetarian beside the listing. Here, the meat dishes reside in their own section of the menu, listed under “Non-veg dishes”. A subtle difference, but there in every menu I have seen.

More soon, heading back to the UK tomorrow.