What can you make during fast? Easy, delicious recipes from drinks, sweets to yummy snacks & lunchtime

The city of food lovers Indore has been under lockdown along with the entire country during Chaitra Navratri. An important aspect of the festival along with prayers and celebrations is fasting.

Fasting is a good way to detox our body with natural, highly-nutritious food. According to Ayurveda, it rekindles the digestive fire, it helps in de-stressing and building up immunity.

Indore normally has a variety of special fasting platter available in the city for its food lovers. From fasting kachori, samosa to delectable kheer and sweets are easily available.

During lockdown, people who are fasting are often at loss of ideas to prepare some different delicacies at home. Settled with their daily routines and chores, people can now try these fun and simple fasting special recipes at home:

Broccoli Paneer tikki by chef Asha Agrawal 

Ingredients:

· Broccoli: 1 cup (blanched)

· Paneer: 1/2cup

· Arrowroot powder: 2 tsp

· Sugar: 1/4 tsp

· Salt to taste

· Black Pepper: 1/4 tsp

Method:

· Mix all ingredients and make round balls

· Shallow fry on tawa

· Serve with green chatni

Sweet Potato Paratha & Lauki ka Raita by baker Shruti Vincent
· Boil 200grams sweet potato with a sprinkle of salt.

· Peel the skin off and mash it smooth, and add 250gram Singharda Aata, Sendha salt, Jeera (cumin seeds), green chilli and fresh coriander leaves. Add ½ tsp ginger paste and knead it to form a dough.

· Let it rest for a while and prepare parantha.

For ‘Lauki ka Raita’:

· Grate Lauki (bottle gourd) and let it boil for 1 to 2 min (semi cooked so that it will not get dark in colour)

· After it cools, add it to whisked fresh chilled curd. Add chopped green chilies, 1/2 tsp roasted cumin powder, a pinch of black salt.

Paneer ki Kheer by Astha Mahajan
· Take 2 cups milk full-fat whole (500 ml) in a thick bottomed pan and bring it to a boil on slow heat.

· When the milk starts to a boil, lower the heat to lowest and cook it till it starts to thicken up.

· Crumble the paneer (use fresh paneer) and keep aside.

· Now to the thick milk add 100 gram condensed milk and one tablespoon of sugar.

· Add crumbled paneer at this stage and cook it for 4-5 minutes over low heat. Keep stirring to prevent the milk from burning at the bottom.

· Finally, add pounded cardamom and switch off the heat.

· Serve this ‘Paneer Ki Kheer’ warm or chilled as you prefer. Usually, it is served after chilling it for 30-40 minutes.

· Garnish it with saffron strands and chopped nuts.

Pumpkin fizz by Amit Pamnani
· Peel, deseed and cut the pumpkin (250 gram) into small cubes.

· Steam the pumpkin cubes over boiling water for 15 minutes until tender.

· Blend the steamed pumpkin cubes with ginger in a mixer until smooth.

· Cool down the puree. This can be made ahead and kept.

· Divide the puree in 4 serving glasses.

· Add 2 table spoon honey, a little bit of saunf (fennel seeds or powder), sendha namak (rock salt), lemon and mint leaves in each of the 4 glasses.

· Put 4 cubes of ice in each glass.

· Top with chilled soda, mix and serve with a lemon slice and mint leaves as garnish.

A note from the expert
“Fasting during Navratri is a common practice by Indians fasting means giving rest to your intestine that means eating nothing and giving it a rest for one or two days this fasting will never cause any kind of deficiency or weakness if done for once or twice a month but if fasting is done for a prolonged period of time it may result in weakness loss of muscle mass and deficiencies. Improving immunity during fasting requires to eat protein rich fast foods like milk curd paneer which can be easily consumed during fast and vitamin C that is present in lemon can be e added to the diet to cover up for the deficiency if any.”

Dr Preeti Shukla

Senior Dietitian