Scope
Six types of tastes are described in the Bhaga Shastra – salt, sweet, sour, hot, bitter and pungent. It states that every meal should include all these tastes, so that the appetite is satisfied and the tongue is neutralized by all the tastes being together. As per the instructions in Bhaga Shastra, in order for all parts of the body, mind and brain to function properly, a balanced diet of all these tastes is a must.
Further, the purpose of having all six tastes is to balance the tridoshas in the body, namely vaata (acidic), pitta (alkaline) and kapha (phlegm). Every ingredient used in Hindu cooking is classified as per their dosha properties. For e.g. too much of vata foods such as flat beans, corn, jackfruit, Bengal grams, will lead to belching, itchiness or prickliness on the skin. Excess of pitta foods results in giddiness, acidity and imbalance in the brain and mood disorders. Excess kapha food leads to chills and cold.
Bhaga Shastra further classifies foods into rajasik, tamasik and sattvik types. Rajasik food makes one feel agitated, aggressive, lustful and egoistic. Tamasik food makes a person lazy, sleepy and depressed. Satvik food gives clarity to the person and brings him peace of mind leading to bhakti (devotion), tripti (fulfillment) and ananda (bliss). It is therefore not surprising that the Bhagashastra has a huge variety of sweet dishes made from rice, broken wheat, flattened rice, millets, maize, lentils (both split and whole). Many of these sweets are made during festive occasions – with certain sweets made specifically on a particular festival. For e.g. pongal in the Tamil New Year festival of Thai Pongal, kolukattai or modak for Ganesh Chaturthi, saffron sweet rice for Basant Panchami in Punjab, sandesh for Durga Puja in Bengal, karah prasad in celebrating festival of Sikh Gurus, kheer and laddoo in almost all Hindu festivals, payasam in South Indian festivals, especially Onam, and the list just goes on. In fact, India has the largest variety of sweet dishes in the world.
Ingredient and Process of Cooking
Depending on the sweet, the ingredients and the time required to make them vary vastly. However, some standard ingredients are integral to Bhagashastra sweet dishes – they include a wide variety of rice or wheat, clarified butter or ghee, unprocessed sugar such as jaggery or palm sugar, milk, cardamom for flavor and coconut.
Ingredients:
Good Quality Rice – ½ padi
Ghee – 1 palam
Mango Juice – 2 padi
Brown Sugar – 25 palam
Cardamom Powder – ½ palam
De-skinned Almonds – 5 palam
Raisins – 5 palam
Ghee – 15 palam
Rock Sugar – 5 palam
Method:
1. Wash and drain the rice thoroughly. Add ghee to a pan and add the rice when it is heated. Fry until it becomes red.
2. Pick juicy and sweet mangoes and squeeze the juice out of it. Strain the juice and boil it in a pot that has capacity to hold 3 padis of water. After it boils well, add the rice and stir it.
3. When the rice is 3/4th boiled, add brown sugar, cardamom powder, almonds and raisins. Almonds should be soaked in hot water, de-skinned, sliced and fried in ghee.
4. Raisins can be cleaned, washed, dried with a cloth and fried in ghee and added.
5. Add pure ghee to the rice and keep the rice on slow fire for 5 minutes. Before serving the rice, add powdered rock candy to it.
References
Hindu Bhaga Sasthiram: Click Here
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