Watch my video here: Vegan cooking with the vedic kitchen | Workshop Vedic Cooking
Vedic cooking is the kitchen of enlightenment. Beautiful words inspired by delicious food. I followed a cooking workshop at Rada’s Kookstudio ‘Vegan cooking with the Vedic kitchen’. Although Vedic cuisine, also known as the original cuisine of India, originated thousands of years ago, a new food world opened up for me.
Vegetarian eating
I have entered a new eating phase in my life, because I now want to eat a lot more vegetarian than I am used to. Eventually I want to eat a hundred percent vegetarian, and later maybe also vegan, but I let it all happen organically. When I go to a restaurant, from now on I will also visit as many vegetarian restaurants as possible or opt for a vegetarian menu. The hotspots on my blog will therefore also be mainly vegetarian from now on.
In addition to visiting restaurants, I also want to cook more vegetarian food myself. That is why it is so nice to follow cooking workshops where you can try vegetarian dishes and gain inspiration. The cooking workshop at Rada’s Kookstudio is the first cooking workshop I have followed in years and it immediately made me want more!
Cooking workshop with Silvia de Haas
The cooking workshop was given by Silvia de Haas. Silvia trained as an Ayurvedic nutrition and lifestyle coach in 2018 and started cooking at Rada as a result of her training. It clicked so well with Rada that Silvia stayed and started giving workshops for Rada’s Kookstudio.
What is the difference between Ayurveda and Vedic cooking?
Ayurveda
Ayurveda is the traditional healing art practiced in India more than three to five thousand years ago, originally based on ancient Sanskrit writings. In Sanskrit, Ayus means “life” and Veda “knowledge”. In Ayurveda it is assumed that all discomforts begin in digestion, both physical and emotional digestion.
Ayurveda is a health science, which indicates what certain foods do for you, and this can be different for everyone, depending on your constitution (vata, pitta or kapha).
Garlic and onions, for example, can be used in Ayurveda against parasites because of their medicinal properties in the intestines. In the Vedic kitchen, on the other hand, garlic and onions are not used at all, because onions cause restlessness in the gut and garlic gives unrest in the mind. They also do not use mushrooms in the Vedic kitchen, which is allowed in Ayurveda.
Vedic cooking
Vedic cooking is the kitchen of enlightenment. Vedic cuisine is the original cuisine of India. Vedic cooking ensures that you digest everything as easily as possible, that you have as few obstacles as possible in your life and that you are as grounded as possible. The Vedic cuisine is originally vegetarian and no meat substitutes are used.
Mung Dal
Mung Dal is used a lot in Vedic cuisine. Mung Dal are yellow in color, they are the split and skinned green mung beans. These are the green mung beans from which the bean sprouts grow. Mung Dal is very easy to digest, has a fairly neutral taste and can be used in both sweet and salty dishes. It has a high protein content, which is why it is an important source of protein in Vedic cuisine.
In both Ayurveda and Vedic cuisine, six flavors are used; sweet, sour, salty, bitter, sharp and tart. In a recipe you see that all six flavors come back.
The herbs
In the Vedic kitchen, many herbs are used. During the cooking workshop there are two round spice boxes in the kitchen filled with different types of fresh herbs that we use for our recipes. A spice mix is called a masala in Vedic cuisine. Our recipe booklet contained a number of special herbs that I would like to mention here:
Asafoetieda
Asafoetieda is a herb with a very specific smell and is also known as Duivelsdrek in the Netherlands. Asafoetida is a replacement for garlic and onions and it takes air out of your intestines, so where garlic and onions cause unrest, Asafoetida brings peace. You cannot use Asafoetieda raw, but if you bake Asafoetieda, you will notice that the smell changes.
Cardamom
Cardamom is a pod with seeds in it. The seeds can be removed from the cardamom pods by peeling them, but you can also get cardamom in ground form. It is best to buy herbs whole and then grind them yourself for use. In this way you retain the essential oils that contain herbs and they will evaporate less quickly. The herbs are then much fresher and tastier to use.
People sometimes think that cardamom smells like eucalyptus, which is often used in saunas. Cardamom is also used in scented candles and nowadays increasingly in Western pastries.
As you can see, cardamom is a very versatile spice. During the cooking workshop we also peeled cardamom pods and cooked them in the spiced rice, among other things.
Nigella seeds
Nigella seeds have a sweet taste and you see them a lot on Turkish sandwiches. Among gardeners, the nigella seeds are also known as the ‘Juffertje-in-het-groen’. You can also grow the nigella seeds yourself at home. In the Middle East, oil is often pressed from nigella seeds and they call this Black Oil, which is widely used during massages against osteoarthritis and rheumatic complaints.
In the kitchen
In the kitchen we all had our own kitchenette with a hob and cooking utensils, which was very nice when cooking. During the cooking course we received a booklet with different recipes. We were divided into groups of two or three people and we made one or more dishes per group.
We started by collecting the herbs that we immediately started cooking with. A dish uses quite a lot of herbs and that way you could continue straight away. Some of the pieces in the recipes were marked in yellow and when you got to that point, you brought Silvia in. These were the points of attention or the learning moments for the whole group. For example, Silvia showed the group how to pop mustard seeds just like popcorn and how she bathed the Mung Dal. You can also see this in the video I made.
The Agni Booster
Agni literally means ‘fire’ or digestive fire. With the agni booster you give digestion a boost before you eat, it ensures that your stove is ready to receive nutrition and to start digestion. Fifteen minutes before the meal I ate the agni booster, a slice of ginger dipped in agave syrup, salt and some lemon juice. The agni booster tasted nice, but was also quite spicy and it did indeed feel like a boost to my digestion. I became completely warm inside, the stove was clearly burning.
Rada’s Cookbooks
If you are curious about Vedic recipes and want to cook yourself at home, Rada has written several cookbooks. Rada has cooked for the Hare Krishna for twenty years and during that period she translated the cookbook ‘Vedische Kookkunst’ from English into Dutch. She has cooked all the dishes in the cookbook and improved or adapted them as she saw fit. The publisher and the original writer have taken over this and now the book is available in different languages.
In addition, Rada has written a cookbook with the name ‘De Koksklapper’ on the occasion of twenty years of Rada’s Kookstudio. It contains recipes that she has collected over time. The cookbooks are available on the website of Rada’s Kookstudio.
The Buffet
We made an extensive buffet of all the dishes we made during the cooking workshop. The table looked festive with all our beautiful Vedic cooking. Since all six flavors appear in every Vedic menu, a separate dessert is not really necessary. Yet we had a delicious ‘Indian sweet’, the coconut barfi, made from coconut, oat milk and a little rose water. The homemade Chai latte was also very tasty, a tea of all kinds of sweet spices such as cinnamon and cardamom, with ginger, black tea or rooibos, and milk or oat milk.
We started to taste all the flavors in silence, so that we could absorb everything in peace and with full attention. What a wonderful meal. Afterwards we had a nice meal and drink together.
My experience
It was a nice cooking workshop. I really liked the atmosphere and we had a very nice group. I experienced the cooking workshop as a relaxing cooking day in which I learned a lot and tasted delicious food and drinks. I was inspired by Vedic cuisine and Ayurveda and as I have written before, this left me wanting more.
This was my first, but certainly not my last Vedic cooking workshop.
To be continued.