Spice of Life

By Paul Fulford on Feb 18, 08 06:42 PM

I cooked this weekend from the new healthy Indian cook book produced by Lasan restaurant in conjunction with Warwick University.

The aim is to help reduce the relatively high incidence of diabetes and heart disease among the Asian population so recipes have been developed to cut the levels of salt and fat and so on while not compromising the taste.

I sampled some of the dishes at Lasan a couple of months back and was impressed at how the flavour of individual ingredients shone through.

I'm not going to claim the chicken curry or aubergine dish that I produced was anywhere near the quality of the food served by Lasan, but was a mighty fine meal.

I guess it's a similar process to the development of Western food over recent decades, with a far lighter touch employed than in the creamy, lardy days of the past.

Lasan's chef Aktar Islam and Professor Sudesh Kumar from Warwick Uni's medical school deserve a round of applause for their work on the book.

Copies of the (free) book are being distributed through health centres, doctors' surgeries and community centres.