Indian cuisine is next main food fashionAs global cuisines touch base with their roots to appreciate
locally-grown raw materials, a group of Michelin chefs from Britain and
Australia say it is a good time for Indian chefs as Indian cuisine is
on the brink of being the next main food fashion and should make use of
its strong and diverse heritage.
"Indian cuisine is on the brink
of being the next main food fashion. I think chefs in the country should
think ahead and learn to respect raw ingredients like exotic whole
spices, individual flavours and fresh vegetables. The world is waking up
to the flavour of exciting spices," said chef Frances Atkins, the owner
of the Yorke Arms, a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant in
Britain.
Atkins said many chefs in India were using whole spices to create individual flavours for the international palette.
"In
Great Britain, we are now in autumn. And we are looking at root
vegetables. That is what India needs to do - to start to use the local
ingredients instead of importing them," Atkins told IANS.
She was in the country for the three-day CSSG Gastronomy Summit 2012 - a gastronomic charity event.
The
chef's favourite return-to-the-roots Indian dish tweaked to meld with
the British palette is a version of the desi kitchddi - rice cooked with
fresh morsels of fish, spices and garnished with crisp-fried diced okra
at the top. The okra acts as a substitute for lentils in the kitchddi
in the tiffin dish, Atkins says. The chef also uses fresh peppers in all
her foods for the British have grown a taste for pungent peppers.
Celebrity
Michelin-starred chef Anjum Anand, whose vegetarian fusion dishes have
taken British foodies by storm, attributes the roots movement in India
to the fact that "two-thirds of India has followed a meat-free diet for
thousands of years either because people can't afford meat on a regular
basis or because they believe that eating it is bad for the soul (in a
country that believes in reincarnation, they are not taking any
chances)."
"Either way, this has given them a lot of time to
perfect the culinary uses of lentils, beans and dairy products into a
vast spectrum of dishes," Anand says in her new book "Anjum's Vegetarian
Feast", launched in the country early this week.
One of her
traditional fusion classics is the Coconut French Toast, a weekend
breakfast dish of brioche bread, desiccated coconut, eggs and walnuts
and jaggery.
"As long as you have the basic ingredients - such as
onions, root ginger, tomatoes, garlic and yoghurt - you should be able
to cook up delicious meals without last-minute dashes to shops," Anand
says.
The return-to-the-roots eating can be traced back to slow
food - a global movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 as an
alternative to fast food. The movement adopted by more than 150
countries has 100,000 members who believe in preserving regional and
local cuisines with fresh ingredients produced locally and as much as
possible organically.
Food is going back to its true provenance -
the root of food, says Michelin starred chef Ian Curly, owner of The
European at Melbourne.
"It is no longer Peking Duck Ravioli.
Being experimental with food isn't the way of playing around with food
just for the sake of it. Chefs are now campaigning for using local food
and local produce. Local produce works out much cheaper and is a much
better way of running a food business...Indian cuisine should make use
of its heritage. It has such great food and it is a good time for Indian
chefs," Curley told IANS.
Curley cooks traditional French food in his restaurant.
The
chef said he would take home kadhi - a traditional Indian dish of
gramflour dumplings cooked in a gravy of yoghurt, tamarind and spices -
to improvise on.
Michelin chef Laurie Gear, who owns
neighbourhhod eatery Artichoke in Buckinghamshire, points to a parallel
food trend in Britain that is making awareness of customer satisfaction
its primary agenda.
"Gone are the days of complexities of
gastronomy. You can have possibly little Michelin standard food, but you
spend more time in being nice to clients than the way where you procure
your food from," Gear told IANS.
The awareness is spreading across the globe.
India as a country "should embrace its own food because the country has such a rich heritage," the chef said.
Indian cuisine is next main food fashion
