This weekend, spring was in the air. The sun showed her lovely face, temperatures went up again whole country awoke. After cold and dark February, the days are getting longer and lighter and nature starts to get in motion again. We move from dark and brown to fresh green and crisp colors. New energy flows and our desire for life shows!

Now seems like a good time to talk about the six tastes (Rasa’s) of Ayurveda. Six? Yes, six. Ayurveda adds 2 additional flavours to the ‘traditional’ sweet, sour, salty and bitter – namely pungent and astringent. For the Dutch readers: astringent means ‘wrang’, think of the skin of a grape or a pomegranate seed. Also walnuts have astringent qualities. Pungent is harder to translate in Dutch – it is the taste of garlic and onions, and almost all cooking spices have the pungent quality to them.

Remember that I explained the concept of AGNI – our digestive fire. The main way of staying healthy is by keeping your AGNI strong enough to digest all the food and absorb the nutrients. If you missed this blog, here is the link!

Cooking with the 6 Rasa’s (tastes) is essential for AGNI to function properly. By integrating them all in the food as they activate the production of enzymes, which are responsible for prober digestion. This means that, according to Ayurveda all meals should include all 6 tastes. Wow! That seems so complicated!

It is not as hard as it sounds. I will not go into detail about where to find which tastes, but I will point the general ‘guidelines’.

• Sweet (or neutral) includes most of our food: all grains, beans, oils, nuts, dairy products, sweet fruits, sweet vegetables (beetroot, (sweet) potato, carrots etc.), meat and of course sweeteners
• Sour includes all citrus fruits, pickles, vinegar, and fermented foods
• Salty can be found in all seafood and salty fish, and of course in salt itself
• Bitter is the taste that belongs to chocolate (raw), coffee, medicines, green leafy vegetables (kale, spinach) and some specific spices like curcuma and fenugreek
• Pungent can be found in peppers, onions, garlic, ginger, mustard, wasabi and all cooking spices
• Astringent is the taste of unripe bananas, walnuts, cranberries, pomegranates, the skin of grapes, and it is the second taste of honey and spinach.

I bet that this is a different way of looking at food! You will experience that actually, many (traditional) dishes follow these principles, and even if you’re cooking, you may find yourself adding spices or ingredients from all 6 groups of tastes, in order to create a balanced meal.

One meal that beautifully includes all 6 tastes is Kitchiri. It is a traditional Indian dish that is said to be ‘a feast for the poor, and good enough for the king’. It is tasty, nutritious and cleansing – so in this period of springtime you can give yourself a little internal cleansing. This meal is also perfect for mono-fasting – the Ayurvedic way of detoxing (read more about this here).

*Kitchiri (or kitchari)*

• 1 cupor mung dahl or green mung beans (soaked in water for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight)
• 1 cup basmati rice
• 2 cups (or more) finely chopped vegetables (you can choose whatever veggies you wish, like carrots, cauliflower, or sweet potato, but also spinach or other leafy vegetables
• 4 cups boiled water
• 1 tablespoon ghee
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
• ½ teaspoon tumeric
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon coriander powder
• 1 pinch garam masala (optional)
• 1 pinch black pepper
• wedge of lemon
• fresh coriander
• salt

Boil the water and gather all the spices that you need. Once you start cooking, you will have to move quickly, so make sure that you have all the ingredients ready, in the right amount. Heat the ghee in the pan to medium high temperature. Grind some black pepper in it and see if it starts ‘bubbling’. If it doesn’t, heat it some more. If it does, quickly add the fresh ginger and turn down the fire a little bit. Fry for 20 seconds and then add the fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds. Once the cumin seeds start to ‘jump’ in the pan, add the rice and the dahl/mung beans and stir until the rice turns transparent, just like you do when making risotto.

Add the vegetables and the powdered spices (except the salt!) and stir. Take the pan off the heat and add the boiled water, cup-by-cup, do it slowly. You can experiment a little with the amount of water, depending on if you would like your kitchiri more dry and firm or moisty and porridge-like. Stir and put the pan back on low fire with the lid on. Now leave it to boil for about 25-35 minutes without stirring – so make sure the fire is low enough! Add salt to taste and serve with a wedge of lemon and fresh coriander on top.

Enjoy! <3