:::The Desi Flavor:::

Tumeric good for keeping away Alzheimer ’s disease?

From Alzheimer's Notes:

Did you know that Alzheimer's Disease is less common in India than any other part of the world?

Some researchers think that this is because of the everyday use of the spice Turmeric. Tumeric is a powerful antioxident which also has anti-inflammatory powers.

Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine have been using it for centuries to treat inflammatory disorders. But it is only in recent years that scientists have been studying it's effects on the brain.

Resources:

- Tumeric Shows Promise in Treatment of Alzheimer's
- Popular Curry Spice is a Brain Booster
- Out of the Spice Box, into the Lab
- Chemical found in Curry may help immune system clear amyloid plaques found in Alzheimer's Disease

 

The Next Fashion - Bollywood themed restaurants

Planet Hollywood plans to introduce Bollywood theme restaurants, slated for next year.

A Bollywood theme restaurant was started by director Satish Kaushik, here recently, a ship stands atop a shopping mall in Gurgaon, providing all the luxuries of a cruise liner while another one has created the ambience of a solar system.

"Eating out is fast catching up here and to break the monotony of an eating joint, people are going in for various concepts... themes are important, they also create the whole impact about a place," says Rahul Makkar, who runs Mercuries, which has solar system as its theme.

… "This combination of food, drink and entertainment has become known as eatertainment and Planet Hollywood offers the very best of each element," says Robert Earl, Founder of Planet Hollywood.

Imitation or no imitation, theme restaurants are making good business, owners say. Some have even gone to the extent of changing themes every month or every season.

Eat your curry...

From Worldchanging blog: University of Texas cancer researchers have determined that curcumin, the yellow spice found in tumeric and curry powders, can block the development of a variety of cancers.

The study [...] demonstrates how curcumin stops laboratory strains of melanoma from proliferating and pushes the cancer cells to commit suicide.

It does this, researchers say, by shutting down nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), a powerful protein known to promote an abnormal inflammatory response that leads to a variety of disorders, including arthritis and cancer.

Upper Crust

Upper Crust : India 's food, wine and style magazine. Interesting read.  Some recent articles:

: Bombay Meri Hai - "Welcome to Bombay, to its melting pot of cuisines, to its several hundred thousand restaurants, each catering to a different taste and a different budget.”

: Utterly Captivating On The Palate! - "Jancis Robinson, one of the world’s 200 Masters of Wine, who was featured in UpperCrust, gave her opinion on Indian wines to The Financial Times of London. Here are excerpts from what she said."

Related:

: Scientisits are now studying the effects of cinnamon, curry and savory herbs have on modern medicine.

: Tarladalal.com - Finding authentic, exotic Indian recipes

: Rahul Jacob of the Financial Times has an interesting interview with Madhur Jaffrey, well known for her Indian cooking recipes.

Spicy desi food is the answer...

Scientisits are now studying the effects of cinnamon, curry and savory herbs have on modern medicine. Read the whole thing. Here are a few snippets:

Not only does cinnamon reduce glucose levels in the blood, a source of damage to the body, it also sends triglycerides and cholesterol levels plummeting. A compound in the aromatic spice seems to boost the effects of insulin, a finding ranked among the top nutritional discoveries of the last 25 years.

"This is an enormous story," says Don Graves, a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, noting diabetes kills close to 100 million people each year. "If insulin is not working and you can amplify its action, that's pretty nice."

Encouraged by such findings, scientists are peering at the spice rack, looking for other blockbuster drugs in the kitchen.

In study released today, scientists from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and Yale University found a compound in the spice turmeric may heal cystic fibrosis (CF). A fatal disease, CF arises from a genetic flaw that causes thick mucous to cling to the lungs and pancreas. Mutations in a gene cause a protein called CFTR to be trapped inside the cell. Starved of oxygen and beset with infection, patients usually die of massive organ damage by age 31.

The use of herb and spices in medicine is an ancient art. Not only do common spices like cinnamon taste good, they can hinder or kill bacteria that cause food poisoning. Scientists have found spices can kill E. coli, staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria when added to food. Indeed, sage, garlic and cloves can keep cooked meat from spoiling.

Earlier this year, researchers from the U.S. and Italy reported circumin -- found in turmeric -- causes the body to produce an enzyme called hemeoxygenase, which defends against oxidation. Rats fed high concentrations of circumin were less affected by the kind of brain cell damage prevalent in such diseases as Alzheimer's. It seems notable that Indians, who consume a great deal of circumin in their spicy cuisine, have one of the world's lowest rates of Alzheimer's disease. Coriander is also a well-known anti-oxidant.

Here is another related story from Sanjay Gupta:

an aromatic herb native to India that tastes like black licorice, has long been used to treat indigestion. Cumin, which is used to spice up chili con carne and hot tamales, may help ward off prostate cancer. Capsaicin, the main chemical in chili pepper, is used in topical creams to provide relief from arthritis. And allicin, the main ingredient in crushed garlic, can, when consumed in large quantities, reduce cholesterol and blood pressure. Some studies have shown it may even help prevent certain cancers.

Need authentic, exotic recipes?

Very easy to find that out from the comfort of your home.

Most sites are free, but some charge a fee for maximum access. Tarladalal.com offers a fair number of the author's recipes and a huge database of those contributed by readers, but if you want more of the real deal it will cost you $25 for six months or $40 for a year. As a convert to curries, I thought it was worth the price. Dalal's "Rajasthani Cookbook," from one of the more seductive regions of India, costs about $5, but that's in a bookstore in Bombay. You won't find it on http://www.amazon.com at any price. (The few titles by Dalal that are available are not, shall we say, her masterworks.)

The only risk of traveling virtually and cooking locally is that you may not stop with authentic recipes and no-substitutions ingredients. Soon you'll want the real equipment. I'm the new owner of a kadai, the Indian wok, which is the best tool for deep frying in nominal oil. I saw it in action in Bangalore and then online and had to have it.

Growth of contemporary Indian restaurants

A new crop of contemporary Indian and Indian-fusion restaurants is flowering in many major cities, aimed at attracting a more sophisticated and diverse clientele that may have tired of the sameness of older Indian restaurants.

From coast to coast, the wave is attracting diners from all ethnic backgrounds to trendy locations in mainstream urban and suburban neighborhoods. Proprietors of all the newcomer establishments say they are shying away from stereotypes associated with Indian restaurants in America.

The fusion of Indian and Asian cuisines with French techniques is the concept of Monsoon, which three partners opened last year on Chicago's Near North Side.

Fusion also is on the menu in New York at the brand-new Kalustyan's Masala Cafe, affiliated with the city's noted Kalustyan's global market, founded in 1944. The goal of the cafe, described by its owners as "Indian-inspired cuisine with a French accent," is to acquaint more people with global ingredients and cuisines, partner Aziz Osmani said. Dinner checks average about $30.

- From Nation's Restaurant News.

How long can you last without eating?

Jay Gohil

1 day? 2 day? 3 days? How about 68 years?

An Indian man who claims divine inspiration says he has survived 68 years without eating, drinking or relieving himself, baffling doctors who are unable to prove him an imposter. Prahlad Jani, a 76-year-old whose extraordinary tale has won him a small band of devotees, took a dare and underwent round-the-clock surveillance at a hospital in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of the western state of Gujarat.

Clad in his trademark red sari, bangles and earrings meant to fashion Hindu goddesses, Jani managed to puzzle the Sterling Hospital's 400 doctors.

Neurologist Sudhir Shah said Jani was under watch for 10 days, with a closed-circuit camera running, and that doctors were convinced he did not break any of his vows, although there was no way of verifying whether Jani has pulled it off for 68 years.

"He has evidence of the formation of urine, which was reabsorbed on his bladder wall. The medical committee does not have any scientific explanation," Shah said.

Jani offered an explanation. He said he has been blessed and heard his calling when he was eight years old.

"I get the elixir of life from the hole in my palate, which enables me to go without food and water," Jani explained to AFP.

Indian cooking with Madhur Jaffrey

Jay Gohil

Rahul Jacob of the Financial Times has an interesting interview with Madhur Jaffrey, well known for her Indian cooking recipes. Here is an excerpt:

Jaffrey has spent the past five years taking plenty of notes as she criss-crossed the world to put together her latest book, retracing the journeys of the far-flung Indian diaspora to places such as South Africa, Trinidad and Malaysia. Curry is by now a globe-girdling phenomenon. Even Japan has a variety of it, she reports. Every Japanese supermarket has curry roux that comes in the form of something like a chocolate slab, which you melt into a curry sauce."

Indian food is increasingly part of the mainstream in New York and London these days, yet three decades after the publication of her first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey remains its most recognisable face. The New York Times has dubbed her the Julia Child of Indian cooking, the British media call her "the original Spice Girl". Jaffrey has written more than 15 cookbooks, with one of them – Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking – selling more than a million copies. (As it happens, that was the book I learned to cook from when I moved to New York from Calcutta in the late 1980s. Scarcely able to fry an egg when I started using it, I was soon emboldened to cook regularly for dinner parties.)

...In Britain and the US, Indian food has ended up with strange permutations and combinations. Chicken tikka masala, one of the bestselling dishes in supermarkets and restaurants in the UK, is unknown in India. Jaffrey recalls that tandoori chicken, the marinaded precursor of chicken tikka masala, was itself brought to Delhi, where she grew up, by new immigrants who moved there from what is now Pakistan after India was partitioned in 1947. "When tandoori chicken first came to Delhi, it was the most exotic of foods," she remembers.

It's also worth taking a look at ther book - From Curries to Kebabs