Tasty Frugal Green

Ta sty Frugal Green The Gourmet’s Guide to Sustainable Eating Ta sty Frugal The Gourmet’s Green Guide to Sustainable Eating CHINTAN 2014 Contents • Introduction : Page 4 Soups, Snacks, Chutneys • Carrot-peel and Coriander-stem Soup : Page 9 • Pea Shell Soup : Page 10 • Pea Pod and Cauliflower Stem Soup : Page 11 • Rubbish Soup : Page 12 • Stalk Soup : Page 14 • Snake Gourd Seed Pakoras : Page 15 • Matar Chhilka Pakoras : Page 16 • Chapatti Pakora : Page 17 • Pumpkin Fibre Chutney : Page 18 • Ridge Gourd Chutney : Page 19 • Watermelon Rind Chutney : Page 20 Rice, Rotis. Dosas • Chapatti Noodles : Page 23 • Watermelon Rind Rava Dosa : Page 24 • Masala Rice : Page 26 • Daal Parantha : Page 27 Sabzis, Curries, Raitas • Lauki Peels Bhurji : Page 29 • Crispy Karela ka Chhilka : Page 30 • Potato Skin Charchari : Page 31 © Copyright 2014, Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group • Vegetable Charchari : Page 32 238, Sidhartha Enclave, New Delhi - 110014, India • Mukundphali (Pumpkin Peel) Sabzi : Page 33 Phone: +91-11-46574171 or 46574172 • Raw Banana Peel Sabzi : Page 34 Email: [email protected] • Mooli Patte aur Aaloo ki Sabzi : Page 35 Website: www.chintan-india.org • Chatpata Watermelon Curry : Page 36 • Jackfruit Seeds Curry : Page 38 About Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group: • Sweet Sour Watermelon Peel Curry : Page 40 We are a registered non-profit organization with a vision of inclusive, • Watermelon Rind Raita : Page 42 sustainable, and equitable growth for all. Our mission is to reduce ecological footprints and increase environmental justice through Desserts systemic change brought about through partnerships, capacity • Bread Crumb Cake : Page 45 • Watermelon Rind Payasam : Page 46 building at the grassroots, advocacy and research, and sustainable, scalable models on the ground. • The Team, Acknowledgements : Page 48 away instead of being packed and sold. The idea of food as Introduction identity, as something sacred and as a gift of one’s hard work is no longer celebrated in the age of supermarket Don’t Waste It, It Can discrimination. The moral imperative of saving every little Be Yummy! morsel scarcely exists. But it should. India has had a rich tradition—one that we are fast losing—of using almost every part of a fruit or vegetable as food. Some India is home to the largest number of hungry and food- of this was due to a centuries-old understanding of how insecure people on the planet. A staggering 214 million nutritious these parts are, such as jackfruit seeds, which people suffer from chronic food insecurity, representing are very high in protein. Some of it was due to a culture of approximately 17% of the country’s total population. frugality. And some of it was simply on account of ecological One in every three malnourished children in the world conditions—watermelon rind was popular in arid regions, for lives in India. About 33% of women and 28% of men are example, because it contains a lot of water, and few vegetables underweight. Although people here starve more due to faulty and fruit grow in such areas anyway. Nothing could be wasted. distribution and access inequity than a lack of food itself, it is still important to bear in mind that so many people are Till the 1990s, thrift dominated every part of Indian life, and being underfed and are undernourished. And it is not India’s affected attitudes towards food as well. Well-to-do young challenge alone, it is a global crisis. Tristram Stuart’s book children would be reminded not to waste their food because reminds us how cruelly unfair the world is. He points out hundreds of thousands of other children like them did not that a third of the world’s entire current food supply could get enough to eat. At a time of modest incomes all round, be saved by reducing waste. This would be enough to meet conserving food was a smart and responsible thing to do. For the nutritional needs of three billion people—nearly half the many, food was also sacred—something they were blessed to world’s population. have enough of. It is easy to say these are issues too large for individuals to Today, a lot of this has changed, and changed dramatically. address. You might ask, ‘What can I do about it?’ The answer, as Part of the reason is the problem of plenty. The growing this recipe book attempts to show, is simple: stop wasting food middle class has much more disposable income and there in your own kitchen. are many more global food choices available. Food is easier to get, and in greater varieties. It’s a commodity now. There’s In India, we are lucky that we have a cultural heritage of also attitude. In his book Waste, Tristram Stuart writes how cooking all edible parts of fruits and vegetables innovatively vegetables with an imperfect, asymmetrical ‘look’ are tossed and deliciously. Exploring and reviving these recipes, and 4 5 sharing them, is a great means to access sustainable practices something we must revive, not only because of the moral and of the past. In the context of mass deprivation and climate material crisis of enormous food waste globally, but because change, doing this also becomes essential. The recipes in this we have no option but to consume sustainably on a planet hit book are not about making ‘waste’ edible anyhow, but about by climate change and resource depletion. And above all, it’s a strategy-eating for nutrition, taste and thrift. They are proof culture of great-tasting food, full of delightful surprises. Why not of ‘jugad’, but of highly sophisticated culinary craft. ignore it, then? At Chintan, many of us recalled eating stems-and-peels dishes Bharati Chaturvedi at home, and we had long thought of a recipe book like this. Director When we spoke to citizens about composting, we would also Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group wish more parts of food would get used in the kitchen instead of ending up in compost pits. Luckily, an enterprising intern, Raghav Bikhchandani, decided to make this plan a reality. He decided to work on this recipe book. It took him a year, far longer than anyone imagined. It was not easy. This book is fundamentally crowd-sourced. We all put our strength behind Raghav and asked for recipes via Facebook, email, word of mouth and every other possible means. We heard from hundreds of generous people. We compiled all the recipes in an excel sheet and spent time testing them with a professional chef, to ensure they tasted good and the proportions were right. This was the part we loved. But we utterly dreaded the part where we had to pick only a limited number of recipes. Finally, we removed those that were similar, balanced the range of key ingredients (we had an extraordinarily large number of vegetable soups and watermelon rind recipes, for instance) and kept the most delicious and easy-to-make recipes. We took the liberty of removing anything that tasted medicinal. We hope you’ll enjoy this labour of love, because it is really a microcosm of the culture of Indian frugality. That culture is 6 7 Carrot-Peel and Coriander-Stem Soup Contributed by Banashree Banerjee Preparation time: 10 min Cooking time: 10 min Serves: 1 Soups, Ingredients Snacks, • 2 cups carrot peels • 1 cup hara dhania Chutneys (coriander) stems • 1 tomato (medium) • 1 onion (medium) chopped • 1/2” piece ginger chopped • 4-5 corns whole pepper • 2 cups water • Salt to taste • Fresh coriander leaves • A dash of butter/olive oil Method Wash thoroughly and pressure cook all ingredients except salt and coriander leaves for 4 minutes. Cool and mix in a blender, then pass through a sieve. Heat the resulting broth and add salt to taste. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and a dash of butter or olive oil. Serve hot with toast. Did you know that coriander has documented effects on Type II diabetes and lowers cholesterol? It is also used in folk medicine around the world for reducing anxiety or as a digestive aid or as a diuretic. It also contains antioxidants that can prevent food from being spoiled or delay its spoilage. 9 Pea Shell Soup Pea Pod and Contributed by Banashree Banerjee Preparation time: 10 min Cooking time: 10 min Serves: 1 Cauliflower Stem Ingredients Soup • Fresh green shells from 1/2 cup Contributed by Promila Chaturvedi peas (washed and deveined) Preparation time: 10 min Cooking time: 10 min Serves: 4 • 1 large onion chopped • 3/4 cup milk Ingredients • 1 tsp maida (refined flour) • 1 cup green pea pods (add as much as you • A pinch of nutmeg powder want, it makes the soup sweeter) • Salt to taste • 1 large cauliflower stem, chopped into • 1/4 spoon sugar chunks of 2 inches • Fresh cream (optional) • 1 can of sweet corn Method • Seasoning (salt, vinegar, soy sauce) Cook the pea shells and chopped onion together in a pressure cooker with 2 cups of water for 4-5 minutes. When cool, pass Method through a sieve and throw away the hard inner lining of the Boil the pea pods and cauliflower with water one and a half shells. Add the sugar to the liquid, boil and keep covered. times the volume of the vegetables. When the cauliflower Dissolve the maida in a little milk. Heat the rest of the milk on stem is very soft, sieve the stock and vegetables. There may be a slow flame and add the milk-maida mixture to it, stirring all some pulp that can be strained—use it. Add the can of sweet the time. Add this to the pea shell liquid and mix well.

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