‘Keep it simple… but tasty and healthy’… is exactly what Veena Gidwani strongly believes, practices and recommends. We all love to eat food but do we take the effort to cook it? Do we ever take the trouble of getting everything ready and actually prepare a meal? Well, in this fast paced life of today, cooking is a long tedious process and all we say is – Who has the time for all that? But, Veena redefines your thought process by giving you simple methods of cooking tasty creative food items.
“I know nobody has the time to cook a proper meal. We are too lazy to buy raw stuff from the market and put it together. So, do not worry, you can cook with simple ingredients that you have just at the snap of your fingers,” expounds Veena. She provides simple recipes to make interesting preparations from boring left over ingredients. For example, she highlights how to make quick cutlets, aloo tikkiis, masala rice, and fried idlis from leftover food. “Food in any form is never a waste. You can always make something out of anything that is left,” says Veena.
To make cooking easy, simple, faster and interesting, Veena has written her own book named ‘The I’ve No Time to Cook Book’. This book covers recipes for food items right from snacks, starters, main course, salads, sauces, chatni, soup to a variety of deserts. And all these delicacies can be prepared in a simple step by step process displayed in the book with minimum ingredients and limited time. “You can prepare these dishes anytime as they are quick and interestingly delicious. It can also help you when you feel like eating something nice suddenly, be it even in the middle of the night,” explains Veena. Moreover, there are guidelines for how to set up your kitchen, prepare certain paste, cut vegetables and use leftover food. And all this will make you fall in love with cooking when you read and try out the recipes in the book.
Why do we always like the food prepared by our mother? Why does it always seem tasty and special? Veena answers this question by saying, “To cook a dish that tastes great, in addition to using the right ingredients in the right proportion, you need to add a lot of love and feeling to it. Enjoy the cooking process, and cook with your heart and not with your hands.”
Traditional food is lost these days as there are hardly few places where we can find authentic traditional food which tastes perfect. Therefore, Veena strives to cook this kind of traditional food by using various techniques. Youngsters, today, are bored of traditional food and always eat out. Veena believes that there is no harm in eating outside and says, “You can eat anything wherever you want but in certain limit. Anything in moderation is good.”
Having led a busy life in the Public Relations (PR) industry during her career, Veena knows very well how difficult it is to find time for cooking. “With our current lifestyle, we feel that cooking is time consuming, tiring and messy. But we forget that if done smartly, cooking is beautiful. Always try to innovate and create something new when you cook for you never know that it may turn out as a new tasty dish,” highlights Veena.
Anything done with passion always bears fruit, and for Veena, cooking has been one thing that she loves doing. She has been a blog writer, columnists and also appeared on TV shows for her easy smart recipes. She also has her own YouTube Food Channel named “IFN/Simply Sindhi’.
Having the urge to create something new since childhood, Veena has always been curious about cooking. She claims, “Every new Experience teaches you a lot. So, she encourages to try new food items and experiment always with life.” For she believes – ‘The Simpler the food, the tastier it is!”
The paperback is available on Amazon & Flipkart
Ronald Rodrigues
