Dr. Mantena's Kitchen

I haven’t updated this blog for long. Sorry for keeping you in wait. I have been real busy in my work since all these days and I hardly find enough time to cook and take pictures of the items needed for cooking. Any way today’s special in Mantena’s Kitchen is “Brown Rice”.

Brown Rice is considered to be one of the most nutritious and healthiest foods. If you are worried about your growing weight, feeling fatigue more often, want to stay away from diabetes, want to keep your cholesterol level down then brown rice is the right kind of food for you. According to Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju every household must completely ban the use of white rice because it is the cause for all kinds of diseases. Don’t expect the government to wake up and do the job for you. By the time they wake up you won’t be there on the Earth to see that. Therefore every individual should wake up himself and abolish the use of white Rice and supplement it with brown rice.

Brown rice is a very nutritious and healthy product. For full details on the nutritional values and health benefits of eating brown rice visit: www.nutritiousfoods.blogspot.com. As of now let us learn how to cook brown rice in a few simple steps:

1. Cooking brown rice is a little tricky and time taking process. Many people have trouble cooking brown rice in the beginning. Once you cook regularly you get used to it. You must bear this in order get the full nutrients it has. The first step is to clean and rinse the rice properly and soak in lukewarm water for at least half an hour or more. Since brown rice is a whole large grain with upper bran layer intact; it needs to be soaked in lukewarm water for better result.

2. Here you must learn to add right amount of water to cook brown rice. For cooking brown rice take double the quantity of water to rice. For example: If you are cooking 2 cups of rice add 4 cups of water. Any thing less makes the rice hard to eat and anything more makes it messy.

3. Now put on the stove and cook the rice on high flame for 5 to 10 minutes and then reduce the flame letting the rice cook in a simmer for another 20 minutes. It usually takes long time to cook when compared to white rice. Do not bother about the gas expenditure while cooking. Think about the benefits of eating brown rice. Because regular use of brown rice keeps you away from doctors and medicines.

4. When the rice is cooked take off the stove and keep the lid closed for a while for better results.

5. Your rice is now ready to serve. Serve it hot with any curry. Regular use of brown rice keeps you fit and healthy. Make a practice of eating brown rice regularly at your home and make your friends and relatives follow the same.

Hope you find this information useful. Keep watching the space for more updates.

# posted by Ram Godar : 11:10 PM  16 Comments

Today’s recipe in Mantena’s Kitchen is a delicious dessert called Carrot Rolls. You not only are going to find it delicious but also very nutritious one. Moreover, it is quite easy to make and can be made in 15 minutes of time. I need to mention one thing here that everyone including those who hate eating Mantena’s dishes would love to eat his desserts. It is recommended to prepare during special occasions like birthdays and festivals instead of cakes and other harmful sweets. Without wasting anymore time let’s get on to note the ingredients.

Ingredients:

1. Carrots - 10 Nos. (750 Grams approx)

2. Cashew Nuts / Groundnuts - 100 Grams

3. Honey - 250 Grams

4. Whole Coconut - 1 No.

6. Corn Flour - 2 table spoons

7. Cardamom - 4 pieces

Procedure:

1. Take around 750 grams of fresh Carrots and rinse them well with water. Peel off the skin of carrots and crush them into small pieces.

2. Break the Whole Coconut and crush into small pieces similar to carrots. Using dry coconut may not taste that well.

3. Roast the Cashew Nuts for a few minutes and crush them into half pieces – half powder in a mixer grinder. If you can’t afford cashew nuts you can use groundnuts as its substitute. It can also be very delicious.

4. Take a non-stick pan and put on the stove in a sim flame. Now add the crushed carrots into it and cook it for a few minutes till the raw flavour goes off and water coming out of it dries.

5. Add honey into it and mix it well and cook for a few minutes. When you cook honey it’s true that some of the nutritional values might be reduced but it’s not harmful right? We are substituting it with sugar which is a prohibited item in our Natural Ways of Living.

6. Now it’s the time to add some Cashew Nuts / Ground Nuts crushed into half pieces – half powder and mix it well. This adds tremendous flavour to our dessert while eating.

7. Finally add 2 table spoons of Corn Flour into the pan and mix it well and cook it for couple of minutes. When all the water gets evaporated remove the pan and let it cool for a few minutes.

8. Add Cardamom powder for fine flavour and fragrance. Let me inform one thing here. We don’t use cardamom daily in Natural Ways of Living because it is an herb and frequent use of herb is not good for health. Therefore, it is used rarely on occasions like this.

9. When the cooked ingredient is cooled off, make rolls of your desired size in an oval shape and roll them on the coconut pieces crushed and roasted before. The small coconut pieces give you crunchy and crispy taste while eating.

# posted by Ram Godar : 8:23 AM  2 Comments

Tips while Eating Mantena’s Dishes:

• It is essential to inform you an important point here. Eating salt free food is obviously difficult for all. You may find salt free dishes very difficult to eat for about 10 -15 days. After that you may get used to it gradually. This is because the taste buds of our tongue lasts only for 10 days. After 10 days the new buds are formed. What ever the kind of food you provide to these new buds they used to get complied with it. Therefore, if you follow Mantena’s dishes for about a fortnight, you may enjoy it thereon.

• Never compare this dish with the one available in the market. Serve it hot. The tongue may not feel the need of salt when served hot.

• Remember that you are eating for your good health.

• Keep a lemon aside while eating salt free food. Peel off the juice on the food to make the tongue feel happy.

• Biting green chilly while eating also makes the tongue happy. Moreover green chilly helps in digestion. Avoid Red Chilly and red chilly powder because it is 3 times spicier than the green chilly, which is harmful to our body.

• Eat for your body, not for your tongue.

• Do not satisfy a 2” tongue at the expense of other vital parts of your body.

Ingredients:

The ingredients we took for this recipe is again for a family of 7 to 8 members. You are advised to adjust the ingredients in proportion to the members of your family accordingly.

1. ½ Kg Donda Kaya (Ivy Gourd)

2. 100 Gm Green Chillies (little less if too spicy)

3. 1 Bundle Coriander Leaves

4. 9-10 nos. of Curry Leaves

5. 1 bowl of Curd

6. 100 Gm Groundnuts (Veru Sanaga Pappu)

7. 100 Grams Chana Dal (Sanaga Pappu)

8. 100 Grams White Sesame Seeds (Nuvvulu)

8. 30 gms Black Urad Dall (Mina Pappu)

9. 3 Big size Lemons

Procedure:

• Chop Dondakaya (Ivy Gourds) into pieces as shown in the picture above and keep it in a plate.

• Roast the Sesame Seeds and Groundnuts and keep it in a bowl separately.

• Put on the stove and keep a pan on the flame. Now roast the Chana and Urad Dall in a Pan for a while. Since we aren’t using the oil, we simply roast them for some time. It’s a very natural and healthy process. Our ancestors used to cook in this way before discovering the oil.

• When Dall gets roasted, add Donda Kaya (Ivy Gourd) into the pan.

• Add green Chillies, Curry Leaves, and Curd into the pan and let it cook for 5 – 10 minutes approximately. In Mantena’s kitchen curd or buttermilk is often used to cook the vegetables instead of water, because it adds a punch of flavour to our salt free dish.

• Add Lemon Juice of one lemon into it and mix it well with the ingredients.
  

• Remove the pan from the stove after 10 minutes and put the ingredients in a plate and let it cool down for a few minutes. Don’t cook them for long. Remove when they are half cooked just after the raw flavour vanishes. Because the enzymes in half cooked food remains intact to great extent when compared to fully cooked food.

• Take the Groundnuts and Sesame Seeds and grind it into powder in the Mixer Grinder.

• Grind the half cooked ingredients in the Mixer Grinder and make paste of it. Add little curd to grind the ingredients well.

• Now remove the paste and mix it up with the powder of groundnuts and sesame seeds.

• Finally add the lemon juice into it and garnish it with the coriander leaves.

Our special and healthy Dosakaya Chutney is ready to eat now. Serve it fresh on hot doshas, Phulkas or dal rice. I bet you find this chutney really delicious and nutritious. The only complaint your tongue might register is the lack of salt. I guess many of you might end up adding salt to it, if you are new to salt free dishes. Others might not have any problems. I hope you will try at home and eat this kind of harmless food and encourage others to eat them as well. Hope you will like this recipe. Watch the space for more healthy dishes in my next updates. Till then, Eat Healthy…! Stay Healthy…!

# posted by Ram Godar : 6:24 AM  9 Comments

Today’s recipe in Mantena’s Kitchen is a special Chat. Usually chat at Bhandars and roadside stalls is prepared by adding oil, salt, spices and masalas. Eating such items usually leads to indigestion and many other health problems. The chat we are making here is without oil, salt and spices. You not only find the chat delicious but also healthy. A great effort is put in by Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju to experiment and introduce this healthy chat.

Tips while Eating Mantena’s Dishes:

• It is essential to inform you an important point here. Eating salt free food is obviously difficult for all. You may find salt free dishes very difficult to eat for about 10 -15 days. After that you may get used to it gradually. This is because the taste buds of our tongue lasts only for 10 days. After 10 days the new buds are formed. What ever the kind of food you provide to these new buds they used to get complied with it. Therefore, if you follow Mantena’s dishes for about a fortnight, you may enjoy it thereon.

• Never compare this dish with the one available in the market. Serve it hot. The tongue may not feel the need of salt when served hot.
  

• Remember that you are eating for your good health.

• Keep a lemon aside while eating salt free food. Peel off the juice on the food to make the tongue feel happy.

• Biting green chilly while eating also makes the tongue happy.

• Eat for your body not for your tongue.

• Do not satisfy a 2” tongue at the expense of other vital parts of your body.

Ingredients:

The ingredients we took for chat is for 7 to 8 members. You are advised to adjust the ingredients in proportion to the members of your family accordingly.

1. ¼ Kg Kabuli Chana (chick peas)
2. ¼ Kg Batana (green Peas)
3. ½ Kg Tomatoes
4. ¼ Kg Green Chillies (If too spicy use less chillies)
5. 2 Carrots
6. 2 Onions (medium size)
7. 2 Lemons (Big size)
8. A big glass of sour buttermilk
9. A small bowl of Curd
10. 1 Bundle Mint Leaves (Pudina)
11. 1 Bundle Coriander Leaves (Kothmir)

Procedure:

1. Soak the peas (Kabuli Chanas and Batanas) in water for about 6 to 8 hours.

2. Chop Tomatoes, Onions, Carrots, Green Chillies, Mint and Coriander Leaves into small pieces and keep them aside.

3. Take the soaked peas in a pressure cooker and boil them with a glass of buttermilk for about 10 minutes under pressure on a sim flame. The boiled peas usually taste insipid. Boiling with sour buttermilk adds a little flavour to it. After boiling the peas for about 10 minutes remove them and put aside in a separate pan.

4. Take ¾ of chopped Tomatoes, Onions and Carrots in to a pan and cook them for 5 minutes. Now remove them from the stove and add ¼ of boiled peas to it and grind them in a Mixer Grinder into a paste. This paste is used as gravy to our chat.
   

5. Remaining ¼ of chopped Tomatoes, Onions and Carrots are left a side for garnish along with Mint & Coriander Leaves.

6. Take the pan of Boiled Peas (Chanas & Batanas) and put on the stove for cooking.

7. Now add the paste made for the gravy into the pan and stir it well to mix it properly.

8. Add Lime Juice of 2 Lemons, Chopped green Chillies, ¾ of Carrot, ¾ of Mint and Coriander Leaves into the pan and mix it well. ¼ of Carrot, Mint and Coriander Leaves are kept for garnish.

9. Now the delicious, hot and healthy chat is ready to be served. Garnish this special chat with the remains of Carrot, Onions, Mint & Coriander Leaves and serve with lemon slices for additional flavour.

This special chat is made without oil, salt & masalas. I bet you find it delicious. More importantly the dish is very nutritious and healthy. You don’t find any issue of indigestion or formation of gas in the stomach with this dish. Hope you enjoy it. Do send in your feed back after a try at home. Keep on watching the space for more updates….

# posted by Ram Godar : 9:19 AM  1 Comments

Introduction:

Before moving ahead with my blog, I feel it essential here to introduce about Mantena’s Kitchen. What exactly is this? What can be expected here? Who are supposed to find this blog interesting?

Before this, I would like to briefly introduce about Mantena Satyanarayana Raju first. This is because he is the main hero of our blog. He is a famous Naturo Therapist from the State of Andhra Pradesh. From the past 15 Years he has been doing a wonderful job in spreading awareness on good health by his preaching “Natural Ways of Living”. He has now become a household figure appearing on TV every day preaching on his sutra of Natural Ways of Living to keep the society healthy and happy. His popularity over internet is also increasing as the day passes by. Such is the service he is doing to the society and mankind. To know more about Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju, visit my blog www.naturalwaysofliving.blogspot.com and look out for a post on introduction to Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju.

What is Mantena’s Kitchen all about?

In Naturopathy seven elements or flavours of tastes like Salt, Sugar, Ghee, Oil, Tamarind, Red Chilly Powder and Spices are considered as the obstructers of good health. Therefore, Naturopathy strictly recommends the prohibition of these sources of tastes in any form of food in order to stay healthy. If any one goes to a Naturopathic Ashram, he will be given only boiled vegetables as food. The treatment first starts with Enema. But no tablet, fluid or injection is given for Enema. The patient is kept on fasting for a couple of days on lime juice with honey and lots of water throughout the day according to a fixed schedule. After fasting for 3 or 4 days, he will be provided with boiled vegetables without any salt. The patient might find it difficult to eat in the beginning but later he gets used to it gradually.

Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju realized an interesting fact here. As long as the patient is at the Ashram, he is successfully eating the boiled vegetables because, there is no other food cooked in the Ashram and the same food is served to all the patients out there. The atmosphere in the Ashram too makes him eat it without problems. But when the patient goes home after getting cured in the Ashram he follows the same food a month or so but not more than that. The reason is very simple. When his family members eat all those tasty stuff cooked with oil, salt, spices, he cannot sustain from eating those boiled vegetables alone for long. So he gets back to eating normally cooked food with his family members, inviting the problems to his health again. It is because of this reason Naturopathy has become less popular when compared to other forms of medicines. Naturopathy’s success depends on patient’s will to continue eating what he was taught in the Ashram. Dr. Raju realized that great Rishis (saints) of our olden days have left out to forests, only because, they realized it’s not possible to achieve their goals staying at home. When those great saints couldn’t follow the Natural Ways of Living by staying at home, how come a common man follows such a strict diet routine? He therefore, introduced a new way of cooking dishes. That is Mantena’s Kitchen. He experimented and introduced all those tasty and delicious varieties of food cooked in every household in the state of Andhra Pradesh without using any oil, ghee, salt, sugar, tamarind, red chilly powder and spices. You might wonder how! Well… the trick is simple; he used the natural substitutes of those sources. It took him years to learn cooking such food. You will know all these things in detail when I start publishing the recipes in my coming updates.

People looking out for tasty deep oil fried and masala (spices) studded food will certainly be disappointed with this blog. I still hope even such people would try out these recipes and enjoy the way of living naturally. People who are health conscious, who wants to correct their diet for living healthy and naturally may find it useful. The recipes that are going to be published here are a part of Dr. Mantena’s Natural Ways of Living. If you try out these dishes you would really know how much effort this man has put on to cook each and every dish.

Why is this blog for?

You may wonder when Mantena Satyanarayana Raju is doing such a wonderful job in preaching Natural Ways of Living, what is the need for this blog? There are two reasons for it. Though Dr. Raju has been preaching intensively throughout the state of Andhra Pradesh and giving TV programs on various Telugu channels, I felt his preaching has been subjected to a boundary of Telugu speaking people. When I asked some Hindi speaking friends of mine, they find him hard to understand due to language barriers. Because of such a small barrier I realized that his valuable preaching is not reaching all the sections of the society. Then I got an Idea of writing a blog explaining his preaching in English so that I could at least try to fill the gap in between Dr. Raju and non Telugu speaking people. With this aim I happened to write a blog on Natural Ways of Living and then after a few days I have decided to include his recipes as well, which are a part of his Natural Ways of Living. Any day if I happen to meet Dr. Raju I would surely suggest him to create programs on TV in other languages and air them on electronic media across the nation on a large scale basis. Another reason is that I had found Dr. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju’s popularity over internet as well. The number of videos of Dr. Mantena uploaded in You Tube is the proof of his popularity. But the problem is the information available on web regarding his efforts is very less when compared to his grand endeavour. I therefore decided to take up the task and write a little I have learned by listening and reading his preaching.

In this blog I shall bring out the various dishes cooked by Dr. Mantena. Apart from the recipes the space will include a section explaining the benefits of eating each and every dish cooked with all natural flavours. So, keep watching the space for updates….

# posted by Ram Godar : 2:28 AM  8 Comments