Eating well

My colleagues and I decided to try out an Ayurvedic restaurant called Sanjeevanam one fine day for lunch, and were treated to an exquisite and unique experience. A sumptuous meal called Rajakeeyam Bhojan was laid out to us on a banana leaf with 26 different items served in a particular order. The meal has been designed on traditional ayurvedic principles to maximize the assimilation of micro-nutrients from food.. basically get the good stuff out of good food :)

Here is a re-creation of the 26 items served to us, in the order served:

1. Piece of Banana as a starter

Then a round of drinks was served to stir up the appetite

2. Dates juice
3. Milk from Nuts - badam and pista predominantly
4. Vegetable juice
5. Harita buttermilk - buttermilk with some mint paste added to it
6. Brown rice water

This was followed by a round of half-cooked items. Preetham, my colleague, didn't relish this round much. Ajit and I were totally enjoying this extraordinary meal already.

7. Sweet Puttu - a sweet dish made from Rice flour and coconut; Kerala special
8. Salad
9. Banana Stem Patchadi - Banana stem is supposed to be good for the kidneys
10. White pumpkin Patchadi
11. Natural Mango Pickle

A round of fully-cooked items followed, and this is where a regular meal would have started :)

12. Green Beans curry
13. Greens curry - generally classified as spinach in the west, there are a large number of greens available in India. I don't quite know which one was served, to be honest :)
14. Banana Flower curry
15. Avial - a delicacy made with myriad mixture of vegetables on a curd platform
16. Okra Patchadi
17. Mint Patchadi

All the above were just side-dishes. This is where the main course started ...

18. Red Bean Rice - was quite tasteful; never had it before
19. Dhal - lentil soup in some sense, but quite diluted; eaten with rice sometimes
20. Sambhar - a Tamil delicacy, made of tamarind and lentil bases with vegetables
21. Rasam - a predominantly tamarind soup-like dish
22. Mour Kozhambu - a curd platform delicacy, typically eaten with rice
23. Buttermilk
24. White Rice
25. Payasam - sweet porridge essentially, this is one of my favourites
26. Honey, to help digestion after a heavy lunch

You can imagine how heavy this might have felt but, surprisingly, it didn't fill us up like other such meals do. We showed some moderation in eating rice that day, and the other portions were just right. Felt real nice to have a great and completely healthy meal.

I am sure all of us have heard about the diversity in India somewhere or the other, but it is when you are here and discover something like this that you really appreciate the diversity. I hope this is just one of the many pleasant discoveries I will make of my own country, and may some of them provide such good nourishment as well :)