Yes Hindus do drink alcohol, though excessive drinking is of course frowned upon, just like anywhere else. There is mention of the Gods and ancient kings drinking ?Drakhshsav? in Hindu scriptures of over 5,000 years ago. It is a sort of fermented grape juice, with some spices like cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, Vidanga Embelia ribes (looks like black pepper), Pippali Piper longum (Called long black pepper), Bay leaves and the standard Black Pepper added to it. It is sold in small bottles as tonic for people recovering from illnesses. I remember being given 1 dessert full after meals when I was recovering from an illness as a child. It was vile stuff, at least then, to my child?s taste buds! It is a sort of spiced wine I guess, drunk in very small amounts.
This reminds me that even here in UK, we used to prescribe a fortified wine on NHS for undernourished old people in hospitals, one glass with each meal. Does anyone remember the name of it? We also prescribed Guinness for men patients!
Yes Sanatogen or perhaps Buckfast Tonic Wine?
While studying in Exeter a group of us used to be invited to a BBQ at Buckfast Abbey (very beautiful) each summer and the highlight was when we saw the Abbot driving across the fields in his Landrover with a crate of Buckfast Tonic Wine for us!
Certainly in France in many hospitals you get a 'restorative' glass of red wine with your lunch and Guinness managed to wangle a 'license to brew' in several Muslim countries on the grounds it would improve their men folks virility.
Hello Mamta
Looking at the British National Formulary the best you can be prescribed now on the NHS are chocolate chip biscuits for certain metabolic disorders, described quaintly at 'borderline substances!'
Winton
When I was a young house surgeon in London, in some hospitals, it was our responsibility to get patients in for admission from a waiting list. Over Christmas period, when not many people wanted to be in hospital, we used to 'get in' a lot of lonely old people for minor treatments, rest and feeding up. Christmas in wards used to be fun. Admittedly there was too much drinking and I am not sorry that it has been stopped, but rest of it was great fun. The surgeon or the physician responsible for the ward (they all had their own wards, because there were fewer of the) used to come to the ward to carve the turkey and share his/sometimes her, time with everyone. Everyone sang carols, shared sweets etc. and consultants gave gifts to their staff, including us poor house surgeons! That will not be possible in this day and age of shortfall in budgets. One never heard of shortages then.
It's worth visiting this message board once a day because you always learn something new. I never knew that you were a doctor/surgeon, Mamta. There's me thinking that you are Mamta Gupta the Indian chef extraordinaire but I now know that you have mystical hidden powers too.
Have you ever written any cookery books or do you ever plan to write a cookery book, Mamta?
LOL Andrew! To be able to publish a cookery book, especially if you are a female, you have to be young, pretty and sexy. I am too old for any of that! Anyway, I have had no professional training in cooking, just learnt it because my mum liked to cook, because of my interest in it and my old habit of scribbling down recipes and ideas wherever I go. I have more time now that I am retired, so I can experiment more.
I used to find that recipes from many well known Indian cook books didn't work out as the picture said. So I started writing down each measurement and step as I was cooking, chopped and changed ingredients as I thought would work better. It was hard work, but worked out in most instances. That is one of the reasons when people write back and tell me something didn't work, I can go back, check it and correct it.
I have to say that having this website has taught me an awful lot more about cooking than I knew when I started it. So thanks to my daughter Kavey and her husband Pete for encouraging me to start it and for running/maintaining it. It is hard work on their part, I know.
I just remembered; someone I knew once published an Indian cookery book, a hard back, here in UK. She wasn't a particularly good cook. The pictures in the book were lovely. Her cousin, who was a friend of mine, told me that most of the pictures were 'doctored' to make them look pretty. They were at 1/2 or 2/3rd cooked stage, because fully cooked dishes didn't look so pretty! This was in the eighties, food photography has come a long way since. At least I can say that none of my not so good pictures are doctored!
Hi Mamta, after all this time I never knew you were a doctor. Wow!!!!!
Continuing this thread I must say that muslims do not consume alcohol "officially" and it is a fact that there is huge alcohol consumption in gulf coutries, albeit secretly.
'Was' is the operative word here Andrew and Rajneesh, I have been retired for last 7 years and am no longer registered!
Well, Hindu's are not supposed to eat Beef, but most I know in this country do.
Dear Mamta
Once you have taken that hippocratic oath you are always a doctor. That's why we know you only give us delicious recipes and not food poisoning!
You don't need to be "young, pretty and sexy" to publish a cook book, think of the 'Two Fat Ladies' rather than Anjum Anand! Anyway in your well deserved retirement it must be more than enough just to keep up with us lot with our demanding questions and comments.
Interesting what you wrote about culinary photography. I knew a Thai Chef who wrote several highly successful books who said that all the pictures were taken when the dish was only half cooked for the purposes of the camera - expect Kavey will have a comment on this one!
Thank you Winton, but I can't even begin to compare myself to the 'Two Fat Ladies', they are such talented, exceptional cooks. I don't really know enough about food to even get close to any of these famous people! I am happy with what little I do do :)!
I know what you mean Mamta about recipes from some cookery books not working out. When I try a new recipe I always follow it entirely and then the next time I make it I change things around to suit myself, that way I always get better results.
If people didn't experiment here and there and change things around then it would get very boring. I guess that is how many new dishes are created.
I don't know any Hindu people so I can't say about alcohol consumption amongst Hindus. I have visited a couple of Muslim countries and although they're not supposed to drink alcohol many of them do. In Egypt I used to watch one of the bar men hiding behind a wall drinking cup after cup of beer. Yet down on the beach he would flatly refuse a beer and say that it was not allowed for the Muslim people to drink alcohol, so I ended up buying him lemonade instead LOL!!
Some of the best red wines I've ever tasted were when I was on holiday in Muslim Morocco. They have the perfect climate to make brilliant wines but you can only enjoy then in posh hotels or dubiously bought 'under the counter' and then wrapped in brown paper bags!
Slightly off topic but still pertaining to alcohol. I recently read a story about a 40 something year old coloured guy who smokes 40 cigarettes each day and drinks something ridiculous like 24 bottles of beer and spirits each day. One day he had to go to the doctor for something and they decided to take some blood, but they had trouble getting blood from him and apparently they had to take it from between his fingers. After doing tests they said that he was an extremely healthy man and had the heart of a 20 year old man. The guy had been drinking and smoking like that for many years. Apparently he was so good at his job and everybody loved him, so the bosses decided to turn a blind eye to his drinking in work.
There's no denying that the poor guy had a serious alcohol problem, but I guess if you asked him then his only problem would be that he only has two hands and one mouth...
Hello Mamta
" I don't really know enough about food" - that is the most ridiculous comment I have ever seen on your website! (I was tempted to delete it!!) In my household we have the expression "I'm doing a Mamta" as in "doing a Delia" following recipes that always work out.
Regards the Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson Wright trained as a barrister and Jennifer Paterson was a school matron, neither with any culinary training. A Doctor can become a great food writer as much as a good comedian (Harry Hill!)