Morung Express News
Dimapur | April 6
If you have been frying eggs and potatoes in a pool of oil every morning, the World Health Day (WHD) gives you an opportunity to rethink those options. Don’t panic—the Naga kitchen provides you a wide range that can be experimented with and innovated around just a little bit to get that edge over your family’s health.
WHD is a global health awareness day observed every year on April 7, under the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO). The Morung Express asked some chefs to tip us off on how to avail of the benefits of the food range available to the people in Nagaland.
For your breakfast, the best way to have your eggs, for instance, is to poach them, suggests Chef and Restauraunter, Joel Basumatari. Boil water in a deep pan, add some vinegar and salt to it and drop the egg into it slowly in one swift move. In 4 minutes the egg is ready and healthy. Alongside a glass of fresh milk—do not opt for packet milk, says Basumatari, as nutrients are lost in the process of packaging—you avoid oils and stick to the high nutrition that provides energy for the day.
Fresh fruits and non-bakery food items like millets (which can be made into a delicious porridge with milk) are also a great way to start the day, says Basumatari. Millets are high on energy while keeping a check on diabetes. The WHD is focusing on the theme ‘Beat Diabetes’ for this year’s edition. “If our demand for millets increase, our farmers will also be encouraged to grow more of it,” reflects the chef who runs the restaurant Smokey Joe’s in Dimapur.
For lunch or dinner, first of all, chuck that water from your rice. “Cooking rice in pressure or rice cookers makes the rice absorb the fat and starch filled water that could increase chances of diabetes,” suggests Basumatari. Instead, try boiling the rice and then draining the water out to make it lean.
Alongside, try “colourful vegetables,” quips in Chef James Ngullie, also the proprietor of Highnoon Diners located at Naga Shopping Arcade. Bell peppers, beetroot, purple cabbage, onion, carrot etc. are available in Nagaland and can go with your lunch. Get high fibre, vitamins and control blood sugar levels all at the once!
As for the meat, essential to a majority of Naga tummies, “eat less red meat,” suggests Ngullie. A Naga mother goes further and says that smoked or fermented meats and fishes should be kept in check, particularly for people with high blood pressure or blood sugar. The Naga food system allows for an array of protein in fresh fish, snails, frogs and crabs, healthy substitutes for red meat. To help the course, try to substitute your bamboo shoot juice with lemon juice, as tried and tested by Chef Ngullie.
Besides, “I don’t fry most of the food I cook,” highlights Naga Chef and owner of restaurant Ethnic Table, Aketoli Zhimomi, a self confessed foodie. For variation, “I cook some fishes and pork, particularly fatty one, with the black tenga (sour) powder found in most Naga kitchens that has digestive qualities,” she explains. But she always combines anything heavy with bitter gourds, either the coin sized ones or, the ones she particularly likes, the pea sized super bitter fruit. “You could just boil it or dry fry it slightly without oil and with some salt, or even throw it into the Axone special you’re making this evening,” she recommends—it’s great for control of both diabetes and blood pressure.
To top it all off, the crown among food items is given to the leaves by the chefs, found aplenty on the fields and markets of Nagaland. Aketoli Zhimomi stresses on passion fruit leaves while Joel Basumatari asks us to go out and experiment in the market. But while you find that array of leaves, the latter’s advice is “Food producers need to start tagging the leaves so people can pick more up of the ones available in the market and add them to the diet.”
