Ananda Launches New Culinary Book: The Healing Plate
Ananda in the Himalayas publishes its first culinary book, bringing 25 years of Ayurvedic wisdom and culinary artistry into kitchens around the world
Images (L-R): Chef Diwaker Balodi; Ananda in the Himalayas; Tofu and Edamame Kofte for sleep
Ananda in the Himalayas, widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost wellness retreats, has published its first culinary book. The Healing Plate: Ayurveda for Modern Living brings together more than 100 recipes from the retreat’s kitchen – dishes that have never before been published – alongside a comprehensive guide to Ayurvedic nutrition that reflects twenty-five years of integrative health practice.
It is a book about personalised nourishment – the understanding, central to Ayurveda, that food affects each of us differently and that eating well begins with knowing your own constitution.
Ananda’s Director of Culinary and F&B Chef Diwaker Balodi who conceptualised the book and has shared signature recipes from Ananda’s collection says, "At Ananda in the Himalayas, each day in the kitchen begins not as a routine, but as a journey of discovery and purpose. Our culinary inspiration is rooted in the time-honoured Ayurvedic wisdom that food is much more than sustenance – it is medicine, energy, and art woven together in every plate that leaves our kitchen. That is the Ayurvedic kitchen. Cook with that understanding once, and you will never want to cook one-size-fits-all food again.”
Images (clockwise): Baadi and Phanu A Garhwali Soul Bowl for sleep; Shirodhara for sleep; Abhyanga for sleep
Ayurveda in context
Wellness has never been more crowded. Keto, alkaline, raw, 5:2, intermittent fasting – the past two decades have served up one nutritional framework after another, each promising transformation, each offering a single solution to an audience with wildly different needs. Ayurveda, the Indian science of life, has never worked that way.
Practised for over 5,000 years, it begins not with ingredients but with the individual – their bio-energy, their constitution, their dosha – and works outward from there. In Ayurveda, a food that nourishes one person may aggravate another. The season matters, the combination matters, even the state of mind in which a meal is eaten matters.
Western food culture is only now beginning to catch up. Ananda has been applying it, rigorously, for over twenty-five years.
A cookbook built around the individual, not ingredients
The structure of The Healing Plate reflects this philosophy directly. The book is organised around eight pillars of modern wellbeing - Energy, Digestion, Inflammation, Immunity, Detoxification, Cognition, Sleep, and Zero Waste - each introduced through Ayurvedic principles, followed by recipes designed to put those principles into practice. It is a structure that makes the book’s intention clear from the outset: this is food as a complete system of holistic care, not a collection of dishes.
A dosha self-assessment opens the book, so readers arrive at each recipe already knowing their own constitution. Every recipe then carries specific guidance on how to adapt it to each dosha, because in Ayurveda, a wholesome ingredient is only effective in the right hands.
The chapter on Ritucharya – the Ayurvedic science of seasonal living – goes further than most mainstream cookbooks would go, addressing not just what to eat in a given season but also how to navigate the transitions between them, when the body is at its most responsive. A dedicated section on food combinations covers the pairings that support digestion alongside those that work against it – knowledge that changes how we cook for good. And a chapter on conscious eating addresses the question that no recipe alone can answer: the state of mind in which a meal is eaten. Ayurveda has always held that this is as important as what is on the plate. Given how most of us eat today, rushed and distracted, this piece of wisdom feels both ancient and immediately relevant.
The 100+ recipes themselves, all served at the retreat and refined over decades, come with ingredients listed in order of preparation and serving sizes based on Ayurvedic principles of nourishment rather than calorie control. These are dishes trusted by guests from over seventy countries, published here for the first time.
Images (top): Cardamom Roasted Broccoli for inflammation; Corn Lagdi for energy
Images (bottom): Red Lentil Soup for detoxification; finding balance at Ananda
The result
What Ananda’s guests have always known is that the food changes something. Not dramatically or overnight, but in the way that eating with real understanding of the implications for the self does – gradually, and then permanently. The Healing Plate puts that knowledge within everyone’s grasp. These never-before-published recipes are the beginning and the system behind them is truly the science of life.
The oldest personalised nutrition system in the world. Now in your kitchen.
The Healing Plate: Ayurveda for Modern Living is published by Roli Books, 2026.
Notes to Editors:
For review copies, interview requests, and press enquiries:
Kath@indigoeight.com
For further information on Ananda in the Himalayas:
www.anandaspa.com