Healthy eating made easy: From steamed fish to chicken Ceylon curry, 5 oil-free recipes you’ll love and appreciate

Some are avoiding oil and butter like the plague. Others are guzzling tablespoons of pure ghee first thing in the morning. While I’m all for healthy eating and living, I don’t believe taste needs to be a casualty in the process.

So here are five of my handpicked recipes. Most use no oil, while one has just a spoonful of oil right at the end. I would recommend including a little fat or diet in your diet. Cutting out any food group entirely rarely does any good.

Here’s a mix of easy, slightly fancy, and extremely satisfying recipes you can try, especially if you’re trying to eat clean without eating dull.

Steamed oil-free fish

This is by far one of the easiest preparations. All you need to do is marinate a filet of fish along with some vegetables in a foil envelope and place it in the oven for around 30 minutes at 180 degrees. Ta-dah! Done.

If you don’t have an oven, use a steamer. These are my three go-to marinades. All measurements are for a 200 gms filet of fish.

Honey marinade

This works really well with a slightly stronger tasting and saltier fish, like salmon. Ideally a nice fat slab of Norwegian salmon. Mix together:
1 ½ teaspoon honey
½ teaspoon red chili flakes
½ teaspoon garlic paste
Salt & pepper

Don’t make it too sweet, so measure honey carefully. Just marinate the fish in enough marinade to coat it, for around an hour or more.

I then placed the fish with the marinade on a layer of asparagus spears with chopped yellow peppers or any other vegetable you fancy which isn’t too soft, beans work very well also, sprinkled some fresh parsley on top and wrapped it in foil and steamed it.

Malta oranges and chili

Malta oranges are loved for their juiciness. (Photo: Freepik)

Delhi always has an abundance of Malta oranges. So squeeze the juice of a quarter of an orange and cut the other half into thin circles. You now get tilapia filets in the market, which work really well for bakes and pies. The marinade is a simple mix of –

Orange juice
Freshly grated garlic
Fresh parsley-chopped
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
½ teaspoon chili flakes

Mix these, pour over the fish (again, just enough to coat the fish) and leave for an hour.

Then, take a foil sheet, place sliced mushrooms or zucchini on the base, season the vegetables with a little salt and pepper, then place the fish with the marinade on top of the vegetables, the sliced oranges on top of the fish, fold the foil into a parcel and steam or bake.

Ginger-soy marinade

Being a good Bengali, I get a craving for Oriental food every hour on the hour. So instead of making something “continental,” I sometimes try my hand at one of the fancy steamed fish dishes you get in restaurants. The marinade is simple:

1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
½ teaspoon of vinegar
½ teaspoon of fish sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon ginger paste
Chopped lemon grass
Chopped bird’s eye chili

I usually add a handful of mixed mushrooms and bok choy in the marinade as well.

On a sheet of foil, first place the bok choy and mushrooms and then top it with the fish and marinade.

Wrap the foil into an air-tight parcel and steam. There’ll be a lovely light sauce with the fish, which you can eat with rice.

Chicken Ceylon curry

One of the best parts of catering food for a living is that I get to cook and eat a lot of delicacies, which I wouldn’t bother to make for myself on an ordinary basis. Last week, I got an order for Chicken Ceylon Curry and was thrilled to bits, because not many people order Anglo-Indian food. This is a wonderful change from the usual chicken curry. It’s tangy and coconut-y and delicious with rice and extremely easy to cook.

1 kg chicken on the bone (do not use boneless chicken because the bones will impart their own flavour, I tend to use chicken legs and thighs)
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 tablespoon grated garlic
4 slit green chilis
1 onion sliced
8 to 10 curry leaves
250 ml coconut milk
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon chili powder
2 tablespoons tamarind paste
1 teaspoon methi/ fenugreek seeds
1 onion chopped
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon freshly ground garam masala powder

This is a wonderful change from the usual chicken curry. (Photo: Freepik)

Process

Place a pan on the gas. Add the chicken, ginger, garlic, green chilis, sliced onion, curry leaves, coconut milk, pepper, coriander-chili-cumin-turmeric powders, salt and tamarind paste. Stir, cover and cook on low heat. No oil is to be added at this stage.
After the chicken is almost fully cooked, say for 15-20 minutes, check seasoning.
Then take a smaller pan, add the vegetable oil and add the chopped onion and the methi seeds. And cook till the onion is brown. Then add the oil and the onions and the methi into the pan with the chicken and stir well. By adding the oil at the end, it soaks into the chicken less. This is more of a tempering.
Cook for three to five more minutes. Add the garam masala, stir well and take off the gas.

Patrani Ni Macchi or paneer

This is my go-to dish to serve to guests and clients. It is steamed, not fried. There is no oil used, and yet the fish is so full of taste and flavour. You can replace the fish with cottage cheese or paneer which is made at home, so it’s softer and crumblier. The Parsis sure knew a thing or two about cooking. Ideally, the fish or paneer should be wrapped in banana leaf, but if you can’t get your hands on banana leaves, just make a foil wrapper.

Ingredients

500 grams pomfret fillets or any fish of your choice
5 Banana Leaves
1.5 Cups of freshly grated coconut
1.5 Cups of Fresh Coriander leaves
1 Cup Mint Leaves
1 Teaspoon Cumin seeds
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 – 2 Teaspoon Salt
1- 2 Tablespoon Lime Juice
String / Toothpicks

Method

Blend everything (except fish and banana leaves) into a thick, green chutney. Season the fish/paneer with lime juice and salt.

Make squares with the banana leaf, and then place each leaf piece into boiling hot water as this softens the leaf up and makes it easier to fold.

Place a spoonful of the chutney on the leaf, one piece of fish or paneer on top of the chutney, and top it off with enough chutney to coat the fish/paneer. Make sure there is plenty of chutney on both sides and the fish is well covered in it.

Wrap the fish in the banana leaves gently, like a parcel. Use a string or a toothpick to hold the parcel in place. Heat the water in your steamer till boiling hot, then place the sealed parcels into the steamer and steam for 10 mins.

Serve hot. You can eat this plain, with rice, or with a salad on the side.

See, you don’t need to eat tofu and chia seeds and other bird and horse feed to be healthy.

Next week, I’ll be writing on chilis and the search for Raja Mircha and sharing a recipe or two.