Rooting for a positive culinary change

The world is seeing one new trend each day when it comes to eating and cooking — the latest one to become a phenomenon is the ‘root-to-stem’ method. It encourages the use of everything right from peels to stalks, stems and even leaves and flowers are included in a meal, thus adding flavour and nutrition to your dishes while tackling food waste. Though this has been followed for years, especially among vegetarians in India, it is still a welcome concept that needs to be reiterated, say Chennaiites.

“The root-to-stem style of cooking is like the nose-to-tail concept for meats, where you use different parts of a commodity in various ways. If you’re using broccoli for a salad, don’t throw the stem away; boil it with other vegetables to get a delicious stock or soup!” explains Namrata Sundaresan, the co-founder of Käse that makes make artisanal cow milk cheese.

Her partner Anuradha Krishnamoorthy and she regularly conduct workshops to teach participants more such tips on how to eat better. She says, “Eating seasonal and eating local are things people had forgotten but it’s making a comeback. So the idea is to show people how to be responsible with their food, make wholesome meals with what they have and not ignore a certain food group — be it carbs or grains.”

With the rising prices of food, it only makes sense to get the most out of what you buy, feels Seema C Sharma, a caterer for a few school canteens. “Moreover, feeding my own kids is not an easy task, let alone hundreds of them, as youngsters are so aware of what they’re eating these days. They constantly want to try global cuisines so utilising the leaves, stalks and roots of veggies and fruits helps me create new dishes. Each plant has its own unique taste and texture, so experimenting with lotus stem chips or galangal in soup, becomes easy, colourful and fun!” she adds.

Home-maker Indu Vishwanath says she recently discovered a recipe where the peels of blood oranges are used to make a preserve. She laughs, “I remember my grandmother making a gojju (thick gravy) using lemon and orange peels with tamarind and chilli powder almost 30 years ago! She would tell me not to dispose the peels because they are rich in nutrients.” 

The 45-year-old loves to look up such ancestral recipes of her family’s and make them to sell to her near and dear. “If my husband brings home a jackfruit, for example, we eat the some of the fruit, make chips from the rest and halwa with the seeds, which I distribute. The thick, outer peel (after boiling to soften) is donated to a goshala — thus reducing food waste, which is one of the most alarming concerns today, worldwide,” she says. By adopting the root-to-stem ideology in not just cooking but many aspects of our lifestyles, it can help reduce an individual’s carbon footprint on the planet, she feels.