Raise a toast to the Heartosa , a heart - samosa portmanteau. This crispy, healthy and hearty take on the oily, fatty and delicious original will have you gobble two in a go without pangs of guilt. Welcome to the world of healthy and tasty food. An impossibility, believe many but if one is patient enough to hear the findings of research done by Santhosh Narayanan, entrepreneur, wellness industry insider and former Railway officer, then you can take heart. His line of food is “where taste meets health”.
After working in the field of Nutraceuticals for 15 years and with a childhood passion for cooking, Santhosh began thinking along the lines of serving holistic food for corporates, encouraged by his friend and business associate N.P. Rafeeque. Thus was born his concept restaurant Jhivras in Kakkanad. The franchisee is set to go global with talks underway in UAE and in six cities across India.
Simply translated Jhivras means the taste for life. Healthy food. “Most of the tasty food is taste for disease. It is generally believed that healthy food cannot be tasty, a wrong notion. Our business is based on that and is not about restaurants but about providing, healthy and tasty food,” says Santhosh finding inspiration in the craze for junk food, despite the knowledge that it is unhealthy.
“That was inspiration,” he says. Thus came about the Heartosa, where the maida or refined flour encasing is replaced by millet or multi-grained flour and the filling of starchy potatoes is fortified by protein rich soya beans, double beans, some potatoes and Omega 3 rich flaxseeds. “The soya bean protein reduces heart disease,” says Santhosh, substantiating the point with a WHO finding that consuming 25 gms of soy protein daily may reduce the risk of heart disease.
He speaks about the blessing of taste and of intelligent food. “Taste is a God-given blessing and sacrificing that is a crime, hence a recipe should not compromise on that. Besides certain cooking methods kill the intelligence in food,” he says and has crafted recipes like cutlets that improve cognition and memory, enhancing jams with Brahmi for children, foods that are tasty and do not compromise on health value.
The Jhivras meal has curated foods like enzyme-activating ginger lime appetiser, a FRS (fruits, root and sprouts) starter followed by traditional tastes of biriyani or rice, chappati, curry made in methods where the health factor is not lost. “The notion that all carbs are bad is not right. It is the source of carbohydrate which is a problem,” he says explaining that food served at the restaurant is cooked in the combi-oven that uses air and steam which retains nutrition in the cooking process. The combi-steamer is used in the preparation of different kinds of snacks, biriyani, idlis and rolls.
Heartosa is thus air-fried and rice recipes cooked in steam. The medium used for sautéing is olive oil and cow ghee and the food served is only vegetarian.
Research at Jhivras began three years ago after engagement with Ayurveda and wellness practitioners. “Their contribution to the menus has been vital. The restaurant serves set menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner and desserts sans white sugar. Meals end with Herbochino, a take on the cappuccino, which is herbal coffee that aids digestion and spikes energy levels. “It is also an anti-oxidant,” says Santhosh. The meals are priced at Rs. 100, as he believes that health food is not only for the creamy layer of society but for all.
Plans are afoot to launch the service in hospitals, schools, colleges and corporate offices. Raise a taste to health with such initiatives.
