Epicurean world
Explore the variety available around you, tap into other people's culinary heritage and do not waste, say four recent books on food traditions VIBHA VARSHNEY
Four books published recently remind us about our rich culinary heritage and indicate the future of food
THERE IS a reason the food industry works so feverishly to promote its products. Most food they churn out cater to people’s aspirations, and this allows the companies to keep prices high—very high. Profits are higher if the food product is rich in salt, sugar and fat—a highly irresistible combination. Once hooked on these, people forget their personal preferences. They choose junk food over food that is wholesome and homemade.
Food is one of the biggest determinants of health. Depending on our choice, it can either provide nutrients required to run our biological systems or just pump empty calories into our body. So, it’s time we got serious about what we eat and how.
Four books published recently remind us about our rich culinary heritage and indicate the future of food. The topics the books deal with are all very different but they highlight one thing—our survival depends on our ability to maximise what is available.
Ugly food: Overlooked and undercooked shows how easy it is to miss out on good, nutritious foods. The book is by three food enthusiasts—Tim Wharton is a singersongwriter and an English teacher; Richard Horsey has a doctorate in cognitive science; and photographer Tanya Ghosh is an artist. Their book is comment on our misconception that only good looking foods are healthy. Foods like octopus, cheeks and feet of meat animals and misshaped vegetables are rich in nutrition, delicious as well as cheap, they say. But these are no longer available in the market, which now abounds with neatly packed processed meats. The supermarket has no place for the ungainly sheep head for which Horsey and Wharton provide a simple recipe. Preparing this recipe, once popular in Scandinavia, takes time—the cleaned head is salted and cured for several days before it is cooked for an
hour and a half. The split head is then served as it is on a plate. Apart from the tedious cooking method, a ban on heads from sheep over one year old in the EU, due to concerns about prion disease (a neurodegenerative fatal disease), could be contributing to the lack of popularity of this dish. But then, why has the last meal of King Louis xvi of France fallen out of favour with the Europeans? When the king was fleeing to Austria with his wife Marie Antoinette, they had disguised themselves as a valet and a maid. They stopped at a wayside inn to ease their hunger—what they got is crisp, fine, honeycoloured breadcrumbs encasing a single tender gelatinous pig’s trotter cooked to softness. The king was beheaded just a few hours later. Notwithstanding this interesting description, it is difficult to find pig hoofs in the market.
The authors blame this on the food industry which “like the fashion industry is driven by the pursuit of perfection: prepackaged meats with nary a head, foot or set of giblets in sight, and supermarkets stacked with... blemish-free fruits and vegetables”.
Today, we have access to only a few types of foods. Unavailability and bad press have changed food habits. Novelist Anita Nair reminisces this in her latest publication Alphabet Soup for Lovers. The protagonist’s family cook vouches for the nutritive value of eeral (liver in Tamil) and says: “For us Tamizh people, eeral is prized meat. When I was a young wife, I ate it a lot. Mutton liver pepper fry, mutton liver masala... But we don’t eat it very much here, in this house... that explains why KK and Leema are the way they are.”
Dependence on a limited food basket is detrimental to health. For one, we miss out on complete nutrition. Besides, to make these preferred foods available in large quantities, the industry first uses pesticides and fertilisers in huge quantities to enhance productivity and then uses preservatives to reduce spoilage. All these chemicals cause further damage to our health.
In India, the trend is more pronounced in urban areas. Several communities, including tribals, still have access to a variety of food. In Woodsmoke and Leaf-cups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People, author Madhu Ramnath highlights this through the eating habits of the tribal people of Bastar region. They hunt monitor lizards, monkeys, deer, rats, civets, porcupine and hare. While most households consume meats of civets, flying squirrels and porcupines almost regularly, some make that extra effort of chasing a snake or a monkey for their meat, which they find delectable. There is also a pattern to their food selection—civet meat is preferred in winters; monkey meat tastes better when smoked or dried. But their preferences are not wasteful with a fetish for only certain parts, like chicken breasts coveted by urban Indians. Animal head finds a special place in the tribal culture. Traditionally, when animals are offered to the village shrine, the head is kept reserved
for the clan members affiliated to the deity. Usually, it is consumed only by men.
The Durwas also make chutney from red ant, Crematogaster. Usually prepared with red chillies and tamarind, the chutney has a unique flavour. Since the ant is high in ascorbic acid, it protects the Durwas from common cold. They are not the only ones to survive on food that are yet to break into the mainstream. In Bihar, the Musahar community relies on rats in their fields for a quick meal of meat. In Arunachal Pradesh, people relish riverbed beetles crushed with onions, garlic, chilli and salt and usually consume the preparation with rice. Eating the beetles in winters helps ease nasal congestion. Similarly, eri silkworms are a delicacy in Assam. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao), over 1,900 species of insects are consumed by humans worldwide, and these insects are now being looked at as a source of protein for the future.
Consuming a variety of food, be it plant or animal, and eating it in its entirety are sure shot ways of reducing food wastage. fao estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes, or about one-third of the food produced worldwide, is wasted each year. In India, home to one-quarter of the world’s undernourished people, 40 per cent of the food produced is wasted every year. This is unfortunate for a country where even peels of watermelon, peas and ridge gourd were used to prepare delectable meals and chutneys. In some regions, plants that are considered weeds used to be served as food. But these are now fading culinary memories. Along with this, we are losing the knowledge about the varieties that can be consumed.
The Encyclopaedia of Spices & Herbs: An Essential guide to the Flavors of the World by Padma Lakshmi, Emmy-nominated host of the award-winning television show Top Chef, and Judith Sutton misses out on jakhiya (seeds of Cleome viscosa) which is a commonly consumed spice across Uttarakhand. Neither does it mention faran, dried leaves of a type of onion, or jeeralu masala, a mix of spices used to flavour garadu chaat, the famous fried yam recipe of Indore, Madhya Pradesh. While it is understandably impossible to document all spices in the world in a single volume, such omissions indicate how easily we are losing our traditional knowledge.
Down To Earth has been trying to document many such food varieties and their culinary heritage in First Food, an unusual cookbook series that documents India’s biodiversity. The book points out that we can ensure the survival of our traditional foods only by ensuring that our farmers and traditional food producers eke out a living from selling healthy foods.
The authors of Ugly Food also suggest that we need to value the foods that are good for us. Even when campaigns have ensured that misshaped fruits and vegetables are back on the shelves, they are often sold at discounts. Horsey and Wharton say supermarkets should instead discard fruits and vegetables that have been harvested too early and then ripened on chemicals. But the practice is opposite, they bemoan.
For India, these books hold a lesson that we do not have to repeat the mistakes developed countries have made. The good thing is that our rural population still eats good food and will continue to do so if they are made aware of the value of these foods. The rich have already latched on to the global popularity of organic food. The middle class too has an opportunity in the Internet. This great leveller provides knowledge about traditional food that can save them from junk food. One only hopes that they make the transition at the earliest.
India, home to a quarter of the world's undernourished people, wastes 40 per cent of the food produced every year. This is when the country has the tradition of preparing delectable meals from wastes like peels of watermelon and peas