Shilpa Shetty Cooks Up Some Healthy Indian Food

Shilpa Shetty, Bollywoods hottest star, is launching her own range of healthy Indian food. Since appearing on Celebrity Big Brother, and cooking one of her favorite dishes, Chicken Curry, she has been inundated with requests fpr the recipe. As a result she has decided to make her own range, which is likely to include the chicken curry she made on BB.

Shilpa Shetty has always been passionate about healthy eating, and so often curries are cooked with too much oil, salt and fatty meats. So her range should be focusing on more traditional vegetarian curries, poutry and seafood, plus wholesome breads.

Her range will be ready meals that can be quickly heated in an oven or microwave. These meals will provide all the essential nutrients, and hopefully provide a balanced diet. Ready meals have a bad reputation for being too high in salts, saturated fat, sugar and low grade meat. Hopefully Shilpa’s curries will change this.

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The range is to be called Shilpa’s Gourmet Creations, and they should start appearing in supermarkets across the UK in 2010.

Poppadom Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups of chickpea flour
1 teaspoon (5ml) coarsely ground pepper
1 teaspoon (5ml) ground cumin
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1/2 teaspoon (2.5ml) salt
1/4 cup (60ml) water

Method

Mix the chickpea flour, pepper, ground cumin and salt in a large bowl, then add the garlic, mix well
Add most of the water and mix into a dough, ensure that the dough is firm and dry
If the dough is too dry then keep adding a little more water until it if firm
Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth
Roll the dough into a log 5cm (2 inches) thick and 15cm (6 inches) long
Cut the dough into 12 equal sized slices
Brush some oil onto the end of each slice and roll out into a very thin circle of about 15-18 cm (6-7 inches) – the poppadom should be very thin
Carefully put the poppadoms onto large baking sheets
Bake the poppadoms for 15 to 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 150C (300F), until crisp and dry.
Remove them from the oven and leave to cool
Heat 3ml (1/8 inch) of oil in a large frying pan, or skillet
Put a poppadom into the oil and turn it over when it begins to curl at the edges
Remove the poppadom before it turns brown and put it onto kitchen paper to drain
Cook all the poppadoms like this, and serve.