Indian food on display at festival
All roads led to Livingstone Kolobeng College this past Sunday as multitudes of people attended Indian Food Festival.
They say food is the source of life and every culture has their staple food, including the basic food associated with them. Thus the day was very informative on Indian dishes, including a variety of Asian foods as the good chefs of the day cooked and shared their menus while the audience tasted all kind of foods. Everyone had their taste buds treated to simultaneous food range from sweet to salty, hot and chillies at the special food festival.
Chairman of Botswana Hindu Association, Abhinandan Kumar said that they have always had such an event as a way of raising funds for charities within the country. He said that theirs is an annual event that started about 38 years ago and they mostly work with different local orphanage centres.
He said that food unites people and therefore people of different cultures have always supported their food festivals. “Local people here really like our food and they always give the best support,” he said adding that even the orphanage centres they always take the meals to always like the meals.
Looking at how the appetising food is prepared is the best tutorial of all regarding food because it allows one to sample it later on.
Therefore BG Style got an opportunity to watch as the food was prepared and served as well as tasted these nutritious exotic meals. It was a fun filled day filled with appreciation and love for Asian food and most people admitted to have enjoyed samoosa than any other thing. However some of the food included salebi, gulal-jamun, tikki, kachuri, chole, bhature, paneer tikka, Indian relish and make di rotti as well as saiso ka saag to mention but a few.
Salebi looks very interesting after preparation, and it is very unique from all other food items. It is sweet and contained in a bottle as sauce but becomes a hard fried crispy sweet once fried in the cooking oil. Some of the meals were used out of local food. Thus one of the chefs Sakshi Goel explained that the festival always begins towards harvesting season which is why some of their meals are made up of local food.
She explained that Makke di Roti and Saisso Ka Saag are made up of spinach and maize meal to give a complete healthy meal. Well, the obvious secret behind Indian food is that they contain chillies compared to the normal meals that anyone can prepare at home. Even the little children just comfortably enjoy these chilly food items as appetising as they are. Therefore those who love chillies had it all in the palm of their own hands. “I love hot meals and I have always visited some Indian restaurants around, so today was a special day because I had anabundance of these meals. I always consider them healthy because they always use more vegetables and less meat compared to our African dishes filled with meat,” said one of the local visitors.