Consuming passion

Soorya Kaur
Raw food expert

We were delighted to have snagged an invitation for a meal with Soorya Kaur, raw food consultant, trained acupuncturist, hypnotherapist, yoga teacher and photographer. Kaur had been away in Hawaii and missing from the Delhi food scene for a while. But she’s back now and looking forward to a number of exciting projects, including a line of all-natural soaps and a range of flaxseed crackers.

But we had met Kaur to talk about raw food – which, she told us, included uncooked fruit and vegetables, sprouted nuts, legumes, seeds and grains. Some kinds of seaweed, raw carob and cacao powder, cold pressed olive oil and a few spices are also classified as “raw”.

But why would anyone eat a diet of entirely raw food? Because it’s healthier, Kaur said. The human body needs enzymes to function, and when we cook food, apparently, we destroy these essential enzymes. Cooking makes it difficult for our bodies to break up and digest the foods that we eat. This food is then stored as toxins in our bodies, and that’s what leads to disease or illness, Kaur explained. With a raw or almost entirely raw food diet, she told us, you’ll have increased energy, healthier skin, better digestion and a reduced risk of heart disease. “It’s also possible to cure diabetes, migraines, serious allergies, and lots of other things,” she added.

But isn’t it unsafe to eat raw vegetables? Kaur claims it’s not, if you do it right. “I use a reverse osmosis process, and wash everything in apple cider vinegar.”

Before we began our meal, she brought out a cheery-looking pink drink, which turned out to be a mix of Twinings’ berry tea, cinnamon and cardamom, cooled to room temperature. The Mexican-inspired meal consisted of gorgeous stuffed red Thai chillies, salad, some vegetables diced with cheese, mole, guacamole and flaxseed crackers. The chillies were delicious, stuffed with a mixture of corn, diced veggies and Kaur’s special raw cheese, which she makes out of almond milk. There was diced zucchini, with small dehydrated mushrooms (dehydrating is a special “raw food” technique that allows one to heat food up to about 118 degrees Fahrenheit, without cooking it), yellow peppers, corn and more raw cheese. The guacamole was nice, but not really zesty, though we know from experience that the avocadoes you get in Delhi aren’t very flavourful. We scooped this up with the flaxseed crackers, which are made through a dehydrating process. The mole, however, is great, and that’s because Kaur uses raw cacao powder, not chocolate. “Raw cacao powder is actually good for you,” she said, delighting us. “Processed chocolate, with butter, sugar and fat isn’t, and you can really tell the difference – it leaves me feeling ill, in fact. But I can eat raw cacao, no problem.”

As if to illustrate her point, she brought out dessert, which was a luscious chocolate tart, made of raw cacao powder, with a flaxseed and honey base. It had been set by freezing, so naturally, it began to melt a little as it sat outside. That didn’t stop us from wolfing it down though.

The techniques to create all this without cooking anything seem elaborate, to say the least: making cheese out of almond milk, dehydrating, sun-drying and, hardest of all, sourcing the appropriate ingredients. “Doesn’t this take up a lot of time?” we asked. “Do people come to learn the techniques to make this, or ask you to cater?”

Most people come to learn the techniques or have their staff learn them, so that they can adopt the raw food principle at home, Kaur replied. All you need is to be organised, and plan ahead, dehydrating or sprouting in advance. Though you could get by with just a knife and a peeler, it helps to have specialised equipment (juicers, food processors and mandolins). You can make sauces, chutneys, soups, burgers, cheeses, ice creams, crackers, smoothies, juices and, obviously, salads. You can also use more complex tools like a “spiral machine” to make pasta or noodles out of zucchini, papaya, pumpkin or mango.

It’s hard to find everything you need here in India though. But Kaur said she doesn’t expect people to become one hundred percent “raw”. “I just want people to know that there’s a healthier tasty way to eat and to incorporate some raw food into their diet,” she explained. She has ambitious plans for the future, though: “I’m trying to work out a project – Gabriel Cousens did this years ago – where people with diabetes come and live together, follow a raw food diet for 30 days, and they will be cured. I just want people to know that they don’t have to suffer.”

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