Vocal For Local: An alliance with millets

The COVID-19 lockdown taught me to depend on staples that did not include the usual processed stuff I pulled off the shelves indiscriminately at a supermarket. The year of the pandemic has taught me some lessons about food love.

Pankaja Srinivasan
| Updated: February 27th, 2021

Where does our food come from? If we just ask ourselves that one question, we can revolutionise how we view, buy, cook and eat food, that is local, sustainable and nutritious. Pic: Pankaja Srinivasan

As I pour milk over the roasted ragi poha, I contemplate on locally grown grains, the farmers, and the pleasures of eating clean. I then drizzle some naatu sakkarai into my bowl. 

I am cooking with a lot more intensity these days – a result of being forced to innovate, experiment and make do with what is available to me. The COVID-19 lockdown taught me to depend on staples that did not include the usual processed stuff I pulled off the shelves indiscriminately at a supermarket. Best of all, I had the luxury of time to read books and watch docuseries, all related to food. 

Where does our food come from? If we just ask ourselves that one question, we can revolutionise how we view, buy, cook and eat food, that is local, sustainable and nutritious. Dan Barber’s The Third Plate, Field Notes on the Future of Food, says so.

Dan should be so pleased with me for being such a devout ambassador of his The Third Plate… I have spoken about him with evangelical fervour to anyone and everyone I have met whether they wanted to hear about it or not.  

Also Read: Mustard honey, millet cookies, molten jaggery and memories galore — that’s what Slow Products promises

“Why don’t you write a blog,” my daughter suggested. “That way you can hold forth on whatever you want to on it, and you will not alienate nice people.” So, here I am. 

Dan writes that we can’t go wrong if we know where our food is coming from. Ask yourself if they are local, seasonal and organic, he says. So, with missionary zeal, as I looked at the packet of poha that was soon to be breakfast, I asked myself, “where did this poha that I am cooking come from?” It is not the traditional rice aval/poha I grew up with. This one is made with varagu or Kodo Millets.

Manickam, who helps me with my housework told me that while she was growing up, her family, back in her village, could not afford rice. They ate a lot of ragi, cholam, and makka cholam that is finger millets, sorghum and yellow maize respectively. “That is why I have the thembu (stamina  and energy) to work long hours,” she smiled. 

Obviously, rural India knew long before I read Dan that local was what was good for the body and soul.

Rural India knows what is local is good for body and soul. Pic: Pankaja Srinivasan

Farmers-in-the-making

A wonderful project undertaken by some high school students of my daughter, helped me further on my attempt to go local. They designed an entire campaign around the organic produce grown on their school farms. They researched the benefits of organic fare, created brochures, took photographs, sent out questionnaires, sought feedback and came up with the plan to sell the produce. 

As a result, from right at the start of the pandemic, once a week, we received a consignment of fresh veggies grown in soil that is untouched by chemical fertilizers. I just loved how children at the school were learning about the food they eat. In the pre-Corona days they were also hands on farmers-in-the-making. 

I have visited the school farms. They are no more than 16 kilometers away from where I live, they are certified organic, and the produce is strictly seasonal. So I was very pleased that I ticked all three boxes of sustainable, seasonal and local.  Just like Dan instructed.

Also Read: Full of Beans: Wholesome winter food in Uttarakhand

Revisiting grandma’s recipes 

The kitchen became my favourite hangout as I did Dan proud by cooking with locally grown and sourced kathirikai (small purple brinjals), peertanga (ridge gourd), vendakkai (okra), chinna vengayam (shallots), palak keerai (spinach), thakkali (tomatoes) and potatoes. When the ‘native’ vegetables came home, I revisited recipes of my grandmoms and aunts that I had not made in years. I also made the devilishly hot Maharashtrian thecha with organic garlic and green chillies that made me cry just to look at them. 

So, there I was, actually excited about sorting, washing and putting away the vegetables. Sullenly resigned is what I usually am. But then, that was before Dan came into my life. (By the way, you can watch Dan in action on Top Chef, Netflix).

What about the carbs? Being unapologetically ‘Madrasi’ in my dietary preferences, I couldn’t dream of a meal without rice. Then came Sreedevi into my life. She is a rice activist who heads an initiative called Bio Basics in Coimbatore that is an interface between the local organic farmers and people like us. She pooh poohs all inconvenient notions of how rice piles on the kilos and got me excited about the hundreds of rices grown just in Tamil Nadu alone. Every month, I try out a new indigenous rice variety. And, not too long ago, I served up a delicious  shakkara pongal with karuppu kavuni, a black rice grown in Tamil Nadu, that I had never heard of before.  

Also Read: Pongal O Pongal: Add sweetness to your day with this traditional Pongal speciality

Meeting the millets 

Devi also introduced me to the Kodo Millet. To ease me into trying it, she sent me poha made with the kodo millet, or varagu as it is called in Tamil. I learnt millets are drought-resistant crops meaning they do not need too much water to be cultivated. I became a convert. 

The Kodo millet has been cultivated for 3, 000 years in India if not more. It is, like other millets, cultivated in the arid belts, a lot of it in Tamil Nadu. The packet of Kodo Millet poha I had on my shelf, I learnt, came from the Pudukotai belt that is about 250 odd kilometers from where I live (I think that is near enough to be considered local; it is organically cultivated with no damage to the soil (sustainable), and is an excellent source of fibre, minerals and more (so it ticks the nutritious box too.) 

Also read: The Nakima Chronicles: A Sikkim treat that charms gourmands

It is a tough grain to harvest, clean and process, and often laboriously hand pounded. But the cultivators have figured out a way to process them into pohas and flours so that urban people like me and mine can enjoy its goodness.  So the barnyard millet, finger millet, kodo millet and pearl millet are there to stay on my grocery list.

Oh yes, I have also become a fan of roasted ragi (finger millet) poha in milk in lieu of shop-bought cereals, that I have with a sprinkling of naatu sakkarai (unrefined sugar) also sourced not too far from where I live. 

Kodo millet poha. Pic: Sreedevi

Kodo millet poha: Ridiculously easy recipe 

I approach it with a little caution. (Earlier, while trying out the ragi poha, I soaked it too long in water and it turned into an unappetizing mush. So, I just wash the Kodo millet poha well in a colander and keep it aside to drain as I chop onions, green chillies and capsicum I plan to cook it with.

In a pan, heat sesame oil, and temper with mustard, peanuts, asafoetida, curry leaves. Once the peanuts are done, put in the green chillies and onions, saute them and then throw in the chopped capsicum and a handful of frozen green peas with turmeric and salt to taste. 

Once the vegetables are cooked, add the washed poha and give everything a good mix. Sprinkle some water on it, cover for a couple of minutes, just enough to take away the raw taste/smell of the poha. Adjust for salt and turn off the heat. If you have grated coconut on hand, mix that in too. 

The vegetable poha is ready. Just perfect with a lime pickle and/or curd. Or with that thecha.