Hello everyone!

My father is 62 and severely obese and he is now following a relatively strict diet to avoid having further health problems on the back of it.

To cheer him up and make sure he doesn't get bored I'm collecting healthy recipes/meal ideas.

He can eat pretty much anything apart from deep-fried foods but needs to weight his food so baked goods like cakes and tarts aren't suitable either.

Since he loves Indian food I wonder if anyone has any they can share with me?

Thanks!

Indians also go on weight reducing diets and they do not stop eating indian food.

Most Indian dishes, except deep fried ones, can be made with low/very little fat. You just have to reduce oil/butter/full cream yoghurt etc.

After cooking a meat/poultry dish, you see fat swimming on top, remove as much of it as possible.

Measure portions like with every other type of diet.

Go for tandoori dishes and eat more grilled (with spices) fish.

Eat more vegetables, simply cooked. You do not have to compromise on spices, only total calories.

Home cooked Indian food is no different than any other food, you have control on how you cook it and eat it.

For salads, instead of oily dressings, do what Indians do; add Chaat masala/salt and pepper and fresh lime/lemon juice.

Totally agree Mamta, my wife and I are very health conscious and use the smallest amount of oil when cooking any food.Marinated grilled chicken served with rice and a cucumber raita is very healthy and totally delicious.

I never use more than 1 tablespoon of olive oil when cooking anything (including Indian cuisine) and my curries always turn out a treat. I think the idea that Indian food has to be swimming in oil and laden with salt is because of the take aways.

Sid

That is true of all restaurant and take-away food. Watch the chefs making anything in butter/oil; they put a huge dollop/glug into the pan!

Not that it makes any difference in terms of giving advice because I know everyone here does their best to help all who ask, but Bribedwithfood is a lovely food friend of mine, who I met through food blogging, she is a superb cook, and comes from a family of cooks, so everyone should be up for some effort to make some tasty and healthy dishes for her dad.

x x x

By the way, I know that MANY of the recipes on our site can be part of a healthy diet, but can anyone suggest any particularly good ones to get BWF started? Maybe some unusual ones as well?

BWF, can you please give your dad's favourite foods, so I can work out a few diet suggestions for you? Are there any particular Indian dishes he likes?

As Kavey said I know Indian food can be part of a healthy diet: I'm looking for some guidance on unusual recipes he could use :)

He loves all foods but fish and vegetables are probably his favourite thing.

I wouldn't want to give him recipes that are too heavy on the pulses as he needs to control his intake of those.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

For seafood/ fish, I imagine best options would be to avoid curries which have cream or coconut milk in the sauces and look for ones with maximum flavour from tomato sauces.

The only thing my dad ever makes is this crab curry, I absolutely absolutely love it. And he's found it works well with pre-picked crab meat rather than whole cracked crabs, which means it's less fiddly to make and to eat.

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=13069

(MUM, can you ask Pop to help you update this recipe with some additional notes now he's started making it with picked crab, I was surprised how good the tinned crab one was last time he made it)

This fish curry with mustard is very tasty:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10559

Simple bengali fish curry:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10390

Prawns and spinach curry:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10088

This seafood biryani would be good if he's still eating a fair bit of rice/ carbs:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=13217

And lastly, one that's very popular on the site, this prawn patia, a parsee dish:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=12919

Those are all curries, but would also look at tandoori fish, there are 6 recipes on the site, so just type in "tandoori" into the search engine to find them.

Will ask mum to suggest vegetable dishes as she does a lot of them regularly. Things like cauliflower leaves, squashes and pumpkins, all manner of vegetables really. Let us know his favourite vegetables otherwise hard to narrow it down, soooo many options.

Yes, sea food is an excellent option for healthy diets. Actually, you can make most fish curries with very much less oil. Tandoori fish dishes are also very nice and healthy. I won?t post each link here, simply put tandoori +fish in this websites kitchen window, and you will get them all.

Funny you asked me about the crab curry, I only edited it this morning Kav. I am editing all recipes slowly and have reached C! This crab curry can be quite rich, because my husband puts a ?lot? of everything.

Vegetable bhajies are easy to make and you can control the amount of oil to your taste. Most will cope with 1 tsp. olive oil. Oil is required for tempering (and frying things), but you can manage with very little oil. If you give him this Basic Bhaji recipe, he can make many, many vegetables with it. He like to add rather a lot of oil, but you can make it with less oil

Even vegetable Koftas can be made in a microwave with very little oil. See the method in this recipe by scrolling down the page; http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=12792 They are of course not as perfect as fried ones, but they are not bad at all, worth experimenting with.

This dal is made with spinach, so has less of dal. It is one of my favourites; http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10371 You can add vegetables like courgettes, bottle gourd, green beans, carrots, aubergines to any dal, thereby reducing the dal content.

Aubergine mash is another dish that can be made with very little oil there are 5 recipes for it on this website; aubergines +mash Look for one he might find easiest to make and tasty

As I said, it is difficult to come up with suggestions, unless I know the main ingredient. So, when you want to cook a specific vegetable/ingredient in Indian style, write to me here or via contact link, I will help. Here is better, because you get input from other people too.

Another thing; Indian salad dressing does not have oil of any kind, simply salt, pepper and/or chilli powder and fresh lime/lemon juice or a good vinegar. It has almost no calories.

Best wishes to your dad.