As we get into the depths of winter we are taking a leaf out of mother nature's book and slowing down... but just for a couple of weeks until the 6th Feb. We're not shutting down completely, but we will only deliver Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

We have a few things to do... rejuvenate, redirect and recalibrate. We will take stock of what we have gone through, where we have reached and where we would like to go. We are regrouping as a team, we will run some training seminars, relook at our marketing, upgrade parts of our kitchen and revisit some of our recipes.

It feels like a good time for us at V-Giyan to reflect, and maybe it's something many of us do during this time in our personal lives to reassess our different pursuits, careers, life goals or spiritual paths, so we can come back stronger, and focused in the right direction.

We started some trials using cast iron pans this week. They're sometimes over looked in kitchens due to their weight, lack of non-stick and extra care required. But we are trialling a new breed that are relatively light weight, with improved non-stick, and brushing up on cleaning the right way.

If we can get them to work for us, we will  aim to move all cooking to iron, where possible, to remove more chemicals, aluminium, teflon etc from the cooking process so the purity of our processes further matches the purity of our food.

Iron also slowly leaches from a well-seasoned pan into the food in small quantities, when cooking for long periods, as we do, which can benefit those on a vegan or vegetarian diet, studies have shown.  

Using cast iron is even recommended in ancient Sikh traditions, and held up as the gold standard in how one's food is not only prepared but served and consumed, with some strict adherents even refusing to eat in anything other than cast iron.

So we will have our pans at the ready, stop watches on, and thermometer probes out for the next couple of weeks taking notes on what's working or not. If it works we will roll out the pans to replace all our existing stock.

Do let us know if Cast Iron Pans is something you'd like to see in the V-Giyan kitchen?

The answer to last week's quiz:
V-Giyan's protein packed Dal Makhani comes with five different pulses?