Food from the heart, for the heart!
Hobby cooks in the state capital showcased their talent during the Covid Chef Contest organised in the state capital recently. Lucknowites dished out the choicest of delicacies, including carrot laddu, wheat grass nishasta, lauki muthiya, covid cutlets, oatmeal fudge, hibiscus tea, oats cupcakes, peanut butter toast and flaxseed cookies.
The event was held in the run-up to World Heart Day, observed on September 29, by Helping Heart Foundation. MasterChef Pankaj Bhadouria, who was present as a guest speaker, says, “The good part of this contest is that everything is healthy yet innovative. Someone making rolls with fruits and spinach, wheat grass being used in nishasta, traditional recipes, kids participating who brought in cookies with healthy oats, seeds and nuts so the mix was very interesting.”
Senior cardiologist Dr Nakul Sinha talked about the health aspect of the food and how a balanced diet can keep our heart and body healthy. “We have forgotten what we learnt as children — eat to live but now, what is happening is that we live to eat! This endeavour is to highlight that we must eat healthy, which can be tasty as well.”
The event was judged by dietician Simran Sahani, Prof Devina Sahai and entrepreneur Tanushree Gupta amongst others. Foundation’s secretary and poetess Jyoti Sinha says, “The thought behind organising this contest was to bring the talent of home chefs to the fore. In the last lockdown, we were all cooking and having fun but then we have all learnt the important thing is to have a healthy lifestyle and food is the most important thing in it. We were surprised by the way children and homemakers have used healthy ingredients in their tasty dishes.”
Painter Pankaj Agarwal dished out a traditional
Gujarati dish. “Lauki (gourd) ki Muthiya is a popular regional dish and is very healthy. As the name suggests it is derived from world mutthi (fist) and has very healthy ingredients including grated gourd, flour, gram flour, suji (semolina), natural spices, garnishing and just a few drops of oil,” he says.
A quiz on the topic of the event ‘Health is wealth’ was also organised on the occasion. The top six winners were Niti Gupta, Sunita Agarwal, Rakhi, Aaffia, Pankaj Gupta and Priyanka Mohan.
Also present on the occasion were Chandrashekhar Verma, Ravi Bhatt, Anuradha Goel, Noor Khan, MA Khan, Neelam Singh, Shashi Srivastava and others.