Back to the Roots

Thanks to wealthy Indians’ obsession with the exotic, and the Green Revolution’s emphasis on wheat and rice, today’s farmers prefer to grow quinoa rather than indigenous crops. But now a handful of chefs, caterers and entrepreneurs are attempting to popularise India’s little known and sometimes severely threatened grains and vegetables—taking inspiration from the knowledge that Latin America’s quinoa, too, was on the brink of extinction before its high protein content made it a global fad. Chefs such as Thomas Zakaria of Bombay

Canteen and Prateek Sadhu of Masque are using these traditional alternatives to recreate old favourites. Chef Zakaria uses bamboo rice to make khichdi, while chef Sadhu makes wide use of fiddlehead fern. There are others as well. For example, in a pre-emptive strike against the GMO eggplant, Aditya Raghavan and Anandita Kanmani’s Mumbai-based Danda

Food Project recently highlighted the use of three different types of eggplant at their first food pop-up event. This shift toward traditional crops is evident in the business side of things as well: entrepreneurs like Reena Sathe of Happy Roots and Puneet Jhajharia and Ishira Mehta of Crop Connect are finding innovative ways to bridge the gap between the farmer and the consumer. Traditions might be waning among local communities, but all is not lost. Companies such as First Agro have been working on creating seed banks to protect India’s genetic diversity.

QUINOA WAS ONCE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION, UNTIL ITS HIGH PROTEIN CONTENT MADE IT A GLOBAL FAD

Kaalbhaat With a black husk and purple-brown kernel, Kaalbhaat is more aromatic than other brown varieties

Millet Small-seeded grasses, millets are widely grown around the world as cereal crops or as fodder

Black Peas Rich in iron, these dark brown peas grow at high altitudes in Ladakh and the Spiti valley

Fiddlehead Fern Neglected in India, this plant is in great demand at Michelin-star restaurants across Europe

Not rice at all, ‘bamboo rice’ is actually the seed of the plant, produced at the end of its lifespan Bamboo Rice