First Food: Future Of Taste, a publication of Centre for Science and Environment and Down To Earth has over 100 plus recipes sourced from across the country. Photos/Nidhi Jamwal
“First Food: Future Of Taste features easy-to-make and nutritious recipes based on local biodiversity that can help us survive the growing food insecurity due to climate change.”
Nidhi Jamwal*
On a scorching summer afternoon, I met a farmer who was crossing the bone-dry Manjara river, on foot. It was April, 2016, the second consecutive year of acute drought in Maharashtra. Several rivers/rivulets and water sources in the state had run dry.
A special ‘water train’ was sanctioned to transport drinking water to Latur in south-eastern Maharashtra where the Manjara dam stood, waterless.
Karela Leaf Pakora featured in First Food: Future Of Taste.
The groundwater in the district had dipped below 1,200-1,500 feet, and borewells were of no use. Local newspapers and regional television channels were filled with news about rising farmer suicides.
Latur lies in a semi-arid region of Marathwada, which is notorious for recurring droughts and has one of the highest rates of farmer suicides in the country. Yet, most farmers here cultivate sugarcane, a highly water-intensive crop.
Uday Deshpande, a farmer from Nagzari village in Latur, who was crossing the dry Manjara river, explained why.
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“We grow what people eat and what we can sell as we also have families to feed. Our sugarcane is picked up by the local sugar factories and we earn some money.” The farmer said how traditionally, they cultivated jowar [sorghum, a millet], which needs very little water. It was convenient and cheaper.
“But, how many people in cities eat jwarrichi bhakri [jowar flat bread]? What is the guarantee that if we cultivate millets, our produce will be picked up and we will get a good price for it,” he asked.
What Despande told me eight years ago came back to me when I picked up First Food: Future Of Taste, a publication of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth, with over 100 plus recipes sourced from across the country.
The 258-page book was released recently in New Delhi.
Bakla Dal Chilla featured in First Food: Future Of Taste.
First Food: Future of Taste is the fourth book in the CSE series that celebrates biodiversity and its link with the food that has sustained communities for centuries. It holds out hope to help us survive the climate disruptions (see Interview:).
The delicious recipes offer healthy and tasty food options to those who are concerned about how our food is cultivated and consumed, and how each one of us can contribute our bit – from our home kitchens and kitchen gardens – to address the growing problem of carbon emissions from the agriculture sector, and climate change.
Sunita Narain, director general of CSE, sets the tone of the book in her Foreword where she points out that “the choice of food that farmers grow is in the hands of consumers – us; what we eat; and why we eat it. If we change our diets, it provides signals to the farmer to grow differently.”
She says the government must enable policies that will promote growing of crops that are both nutritive and compatible with the local environment. Change of cropping patterns towards climate-resilience will need a supportive structure. And the book describes just how this can be achieved.
Food is not just about nutrition. It is also about traditional knowledge and age-old wisdom. Food diversity is linked to diversity in the biological world, and each region of our country has its own dietary patterns and habits, which have evolved over centuries based on the local environment.
But, in a world of short-lived Instagram reels and even shorter attention spans, the real knowledge of our food systems has taken a backseat, and is at the risk of getting lost forever.
Book cover of the book.
Back To The Future
First Food: Future of Taste takes us back to our roots, figuratively and literally, and urges us to consume roots, seeds, wild flowers, shoots and peels that our ancestors cooked and ate.
There are four sections in the book. The first one is on millets that have received a fillip both locally and globally due to their water efficiency and climate resilience.
Vibha Varshney, who has conceptualised and researched on this book, writes that millets have been cultivated in the semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia for at least 5,000 years. The cultivators selected varieties based on their ability to withstand dry conditions, rather than on their yields. This is the reason that millets have not lost their natural tolerance to stress during the domestication process, unlike wheat and paddy.
A number of people have shared their recipes for millet in the book. Jatin Mallick, Chef and Co-owner of Tres Restaurant in New Delhi, writes about Summer Vegetable Loaf (foxtail millet recipe); Manjit S Gill, former corporate chef, ITC Hotels, has a recipe Anar Kutki (kutki millet, a lesser known millet variety); Vegetable Paella made with kodo millet is another. Recipes such as Ragi Srikhand Cannoli and Sorghum Sweet Beverage add a dash of sweetness.
For the every morning dilemma of what to make for breakfast, First Food: Future of Taste offers many ideas. These include the nutritious Bathua (Chenopodium album) stuffed paratha and Bathua poori; Faba Bean/ Vicia Faba pancake/ chilla; Karela (bitter gourd) leaf pakora and scrambled eggs with karela leaves, and so on.
The Meals section of the book has a recipe of Meetha Karela from the hills of Uttarakhand, which has nothing to do with bitter gourd. It is made of Cyclanthera pedata (meetha karela) that is more like the cucumber. It is known as pahadi karela, Ram karela, kankoda, etc. There are other dishes that use wild flowers to make delectable curries and soups.
There are separate sections for Chutneys and Pickles, Sweets, and Beverages, which use local ingredients to prepare delectable fare.
The book is a primer to survive food shortages brought in by uncertainties of extreme weather events, which are on the rise and are likely to get worse. The seeds, leaves, fruits, weeds and flowers that the book documents as part of the recipes can also be grown in our kitchen gardens and backyards.
As Narain rightly points out that there is a need to change the future of taste so that it works for the people and the planet. And farmers like Uday Deshpande of Latur can go back to cultivating their traditional crop of millets, while we revisit our roots too.
Priced at Rs 950, First Food: Future of Taste can be ordered online here at a discounted price of Rs 750. All four books in the food series can be purchased for Rs 2,000 here.
Vibha Varshney, Consulting Editor, Down To Earth.
Interview
“Local biodiversity that can help us survive climate change”
– Vibha Varshney, Consulting Editor, Down To Earth
There are a large number of food recipe books. How is this food book different from the others?
We have published four books in the First Food book series so far. Each features ingredients which are based on local biodiversity. The series explores the nature-nurture- livelihood linkage of the food that sustains us. The latest is Future of Taste which is largely in survival foods – local biodiversity that can help us survive climate change.
How open are chefs in hotels and restaurants to experiment with lost recipes and lesser known food ingredients?
We find chefs very interested in experimenting with new ingredients – biodiversity provides their cuisine an edge over their competitors. We have had chefs curate meals out of our books at our book launch events of all the four books.
Are these ingredients easily available in the markets for common people to try recipes at their homes?
The ingredients featured in the book are a mix of cultivated and foraged foods. Many of these are available in the market but many grow wild around you and all you need is the knowledge about how to recognise and prepare them. Sometimes vendors can get the foraged produce for people who ask specifically for them. The Azadpur Sabzi Mandi in Delhi has foragers who come and sell their products in the market.
The book is seen as a primer to survive food shortages in a climate-risked world. How?
The foods featured in our latest book are climate resilient. These are tree borne foods, modified stems or roots which are least affected by sudden changes in the climate. The book also has recipes based on seeds which can be stored for long periods. The idea is that the more diversified our food plate is, the easier it would be to find food because something or the other would be available.
*Nidhi Jamwal is a journalist based in Mumbai. She reports on environment, climate, and rural issues.
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Book Review: The Future Of Taste
“First Food: Future Of Taste features easy-to-make and nutritious recipes based on local biodiversity that can help us survive the growing food insecurity due to climate change.”
Nidhi Jamwal*
On a scorching summer afternoon, I met a farmer who was crossing the bone-dry Manjara river, on foot. It was April, 2016, the second consecutive year of acute drought in Maharashtra. Several rivers/rivulets and water sources in the state had run dry.
A special ‘water train’ was sanctioned to transport drinking water to Latur in south-eastern Maharashtra where the Manjara dam stood, waterless.
The groundwater in the district had dipped below 1,200-1,500 feet, and borewells were of no use. Local newspapers and regional television channels were filled with news about rising farmer suicides.
Latur lies in a semi-arid region of Marathwada, which is notorious for recurring droughts and has one of the highest rates of farmer suicides in the country. Yet, most farmers here cultivate sugarcane, a highly water-intensive crop.
Uday Deshpande, a farmer from Nagzari village in Latur, who was crossing the dry Manjara river, explained why.
“We grow what people eat and what we can sell as we also have families to feed. Our sugarcane is picked up by the local sugar factories and we earn some money.” The farmer said how traditionally, they cultivated jowar [sorghum, a millet], which needs very little water. It was convenient and cheaper.
“But, how many people in cities eat jwarrichi bhakri [jowar flat bread]? What is the guarantee that if we cultivate millets, our produce will be picked up and we will get a good price for it,” he asked.
What Despande told me eight years ago came back to me when I picked up First Food: Future Of Taste, a publication of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth, with over 100 plus recipes sourced from across the country.
The 258-page book was released recently in New Delhi.
First Food: Future of Taste is the fourth book in the CSE series that celebrates biodiversity and its link with the food that has sustained communities for centuries. It holds out hope to help us survive the climate disruptions (see Interview:).
The delicious recipes offer healthy and tasty food options to those who are concerned about how our food is cultivated and consumed, and how each one of us can contribute our bit – from our home kitchens and kitchen gardens – to address the growing problem of carbon emissions from the agriculture sector, and climate change.
Sunita Narain, director general of CSE, sets the tone of the book in her Foreword where she points out that “the choice of food that farmers grow is in the hands of consumers – us; what we eat; and why we eat it. If we change our diets, it provides signals to the farmer to grow differently.”
She says the government must enable policies that will promote growing of crops that are both nutritive and compatible with the local environment. Change of cropping patterns towards climate-resilience will need a supportive structure. And the book describes just how this can be achieved.
Food is not just about nutrition. It is also about traditional knowledge and age-old wisdom. Food diversity is linked to diversity in the biological world, and each region of our country has its own dietary patterns and habits, which have evolved over centuries based on the local environment.
But, in a world of short-lived Instagram reels and even shorter attention spans, the real knowledge of our food systems has taken a backseat, and is at the risk of getting lost forever.
Back To The Future
First Food: Future of Taste takes us back to our roots, figuratively and literally, and urges us to consume roots, seeds, wild flowers, shoots and peels that our ancestors cooked and ate.
There are four sections in the book. The first one is on millets that have received a fillip both locally and globally due to their water efficiency and climate resilience.
Vibha Varshney, who has conceptualised and researched on this book, writes that millets have been cultivated in the semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia for at least 5,000 years. The cultivators selected varieties based on their ability to withstand dry conditions, rather than on their yields. This is the reason that millets have not lost their natural tolerance to stress during the domestication process, unlike wheat and paddy.
A number of people have shared their recipes for millet in the book. Jatin Mallick, Chef and Co-owner of Tres Restaurant in New Delhi, writes about Summer Vegetable Loaf (foxtail millet recipe); Manjit S Gill, former corporate chef, ITC Hotels, has a recipe Anar Kutki (kutki millet, a lesser known millet variety); Vegetable Paella made with kodo millet is another. Recipes such as Ragi Srikhand Cannoli and Sorghum Sweet Beverage add a dash of sweetness.
For the every morning dilemma of what to make for breakfast, First Food: Future of Taste offers many ideas. These include the nutritious Bathua (Chenopodium album) stuffed paratha and Bathua poori; Faba Bean/ Vicia Faba pancake/ chilla; Karela (bitter gourd) leaf pakora and scrambled eggs with karela leaves, and so on.
The Meals section of the book has a recipe of Meetha Karela from the hills of Uttarakhand, which has nothing to do with bitter gourd. It is made of Cyclanthera pedata (meetha karela) that is more like the cucumber. It is known as pahadi karela, Ram karela, kankoda, etc. There are other dishes that use wild flowers to make delectable curries and soups.
There are separate sections for Chutneys and Pickles, Sweets, and Beverages, which use local ingredients to prepare delectable fare.
The book is a primer to survive food shortages brought in by uncertainties of extreme weather events, which are on the rise and are likely to get worse. The seeds, leaves, fruits, weeds and flowers that the book documents as part of the recipes can also be grown in our kitchen gardens and backyards.
As Narain rightly points out that there is a need to change the future of taste so that it works for the people and the planet. And farmers like Uday Deshpande of Latur can go back to cultivating their traditional crop of millets, while we revisit our roots too.
Priced at Rs 950, First Food: Future of Taste can be ordered online here at a discounted price of Rs 750. All four books in the food series can be purchased for Rs 2,000 here.
Interview
“Local biodiversity that can help us survive climate change”
– Vibha Varshney, Consulting Editor, Down To Earth
We have published four books in the First Food book series so far. Each features ingredients which are based on local biodiversity. The series explores the nature-nurture- livelihood linkage of the food that sustains us. The latest is Future of Taste which is largely in survival foods – local biodiversity that can help us survive climate change.
We find chefs very interested in experimenting with new ingredients – biodiversity provides their cuisine an edge over their competitors. We have had chefs curate meals out of our books at our book launch events of all the four books.
The ingredients featured in the book are a mix of cultivated and foraged foods. Many of these are available in the market but many grow wild around you and all you need is the knowledge about how to recognise and prepare them. Sometimes vendors can get the foraged produce for people who ask specifically for them. The Azadpur Sabzi Mandi in Delhi has foragers who come and sell their products in the market.
The foods featured in our latest book are climate resilient. These are tree borne foods, modified stems or roots which are least affected by sudden changes in the climate. The book also has recipes based on seeds which can be stored for long periods. The idea is that the more diversified our food plate is, the easier it would be to find food because something or the other would be available.
*Nidhi Jamwal is a journalist based in Mumbai. She reports on environment, climate, and rural issues.
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