Page 220 - Vogue - India (January 2020)

TASTE
DON’T WASTE MY THYME

Composting your food waste? Good on you! The kitchen is a great place to start
going green by turning leftovers into lavish meals and swapping exotic ingredients

for local gems. Sonal Ved tasks three food experts to cook responsibly

For a country that is home to 24 per
cent of the world’s malnourished pop-
ulation (amounting to 19.4 crore peo-
ple), the amount of food India wastes is
not only colossal, but alarming. Ac-
cording to the United Nations 2018
Global Nutrition Report, about 40 per
cent of the food produced in India is
discarded and ends up in a landfi ll. In
the wake of the global movement to
conserve, the kitchen is a good place to
begin. Vogue challenges three kitchen
pros to cook clean.

Nandita Iyer

FOOD BLOGGER,
SAFFRONTRAIL.COM

The challenge: To make
something fresh using leftovers

“While growing up, I saw my grandparents
soak leftover rice in water overnight. We
ate the fermented version the next day,”
recalls Nandita Iyer, cookbook author
of The Everyday Healthy Vegetarian
(Hachette India). Her memories are of
Tamil pazhaya sadam, a close cousin of
the Odia pakhala and the Gujarati chaas-
bhat, all proving that the connection
between leftover food and Indian kitchens
is more cultural than faddish.
In her kitchen, Iyer believes in cooking
only as much as is required. “But when
there are leftovers, I turn stale bread into
crumbs and use it to top casseroles or
turn rotis into quesadillas.” For Vogue,
she juliennes leftover ragi rotis to make
a rainbow ragi noodle bowl. The crispy ON SHELF
fl at noodles are then tossed in a Now & Again by Julia
Karnataka-style chutney made of red Turshen (Chronicle Books)
chili, tamarind, jaggery and garlic. With a stamp of approval from
“And fi nished with my garden’s purple Y otam Ottolenghi, this leftover
basil and fenugreek leaves,” she adds. handbook teaches you to
reuse scrambled eggs,
chutneys, garlic bread,

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