Stalking the wild | Chef Thomas Zacharias on elusive monsoon vegetables
5 months, 3 weeks ago

Stalking the wild | Chef Thomas Zacharias on elusive monsoon vegetables

The Hindu  

I first stumbled upon shevla, or dragon stalk yam, about seven years ago while wandering through Bhaji Galli on Grant Road in Mumbai. The decade of discovery Ten years ago, I started the hashtag #KnowYourDesiVegetables to promote awareness and appreciation of India’s incredible local produce. It’s ironic that while India boasts a rich array of unique vegetables, we are more familiar with imported ones like broccoli and avocado. In Assam, dhekia xaak, or fiddlehead ferns, are a monsoon delight known for their tangy flavour and versatility, but kochur loti or maan-kosu remain relatively unknown among today’s youth. We’re already seeing early signs of this bleak future as many local vegetables are replaced by more commercially viable options.

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History of this topic

On a journey to find where the wild things grow
2 years, 4 months ago

On a journey to find where the wild things grow

Live Mint  

The Instagram page of The Locavore—an initiative started this year by Mumbai-based chef Thomas Zacharias to champion regional food through storytelling, recipes and events—is turning out to be a treasure trove of information on wild foods. Links to indigenous wisdom Wild foods, now under threat, are deemed critical to the world’s food security and nutritional needs. “Even though wild forest …

Enter the Gujarati monsoon kitchen
4 years, 4 months ago

Enter the Gujarati monsoon kitchen

Live Mint  

Last year, Nihar Desai, a 28-year-old film-maker from Mumbai, started noting down family recipes under the guidance of his grandmother. Posted on his Instagram page @bay101.in, they feature his 65-year-old mother, Jyoti Desai, recollecting food memories as she bakes handvo, grinds mustard seeds in a mortar-pestle and coats whole ripe Alphonso mangoes with castor oil to make a pickle called …

How green is your monsoon kitchen?
4 years, 5 months ago

How green is your monsoon kitchen?

Live Mint  

It was an overcast Tuesday afternoon when a much anticipated parcel from Kerala arrived for home chef Marina Balakrishnan in Juhu, Mumbai. It contained the ingredients of karkidaka kanji, a herb-infused red rice gruel from Kerala, and the mainstay of her monsoon offering in a seasonally changing menu. The parcel contained key ingredients of the dish, including the native red …

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