Gadvasu food fest: Novel ideas tickle foodies' palates

LUDHIANA: Flavoured jaggery (gur), low fat products such as milk cake, yogurt ice cream, kesar-badam milk, emu bags, etc. marked the food festival of Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (Gadvasu), organized on Monday.
A number of value added products prepared from chicken and fish were exhibited along with a wide range of milk products developed by the College of Veterinary sciences, College of Fisheries and College of Dairy Science and Technology.
Chicken meat products such as nuggets, cutlets, patties, pickle, along with snacks such as noodles, chicken samosa and biscuits that can be stored at room temperature for more than three months were high in demand.
Besides this, newly-introduced health products such as emu meat curry and emu meat pickle attracted visitors and sold like hot cakes.
Professor and head of the department of livestock production and technology at Gadvasu, M K Chatli said, "Farmers who are into emu farming are facing heavy losses. So, by introducing emu bags, emu meat pickle and emu meat curry, we are educating them to make good use of the birds. Moreover, eatables made of emu are good for health too," he told.
College of Dairy Science and Technology introduced an array of dairy products categorized as health and value added products. The health products included probiotic masala lassi, fibre enriched dhoda barfi, flavored yoghurt while mozzarella cheese, masala paneer, mango lassi, carrot lassi, jal jeera and mango whey drinks were among the value-added products. Three new products introduced by the college included low fat kesar badam milk, low calorie milk cake and low fat yoghurt ice cream, which is 80% lesser in fat as compare to the yogurt ice cream available in the market.
A pinni making machine, designed and developed by the College of Dairy Science and Technology, made visitors curious. Students of Gadvasu also introduced made flavoured jaggery. Haramanjeet Singh, a student involved in the project, said, "We have used natural ingredients to give a different look and different flavour to the jaggery. So, we have haldi jaggery, peanut jaggery, khas-khas jaggery and sesame jaggery. We call the project 'virsa sambhal'."