In Arina Suchde's kitchen, watermelon season is the time for experimentation. The firm white rind of the melon, which most of us prefer to discard, finds creative use in her hands
Potato peel crisps. Pics/Nirav Trivedi
In Arina Suchde's kitchen, watermelon season is the time for experimentation. The firm white rind of the melon, which most of us prefer to discard, finds creative use in her hands. The bland rind gets pickled or steps in as a substitute for cucumber in gazpacho preparations. Here, the white of the watermelon gets as much attention as the red.
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A trained chef and mixologist, Suchde is a new convert and a firm believer in the root-to-shoot discipline, in which wastage of produce is pared down to a minimum. "We often speak of recycling leftovers but wastage starts even before food is prepared as we start disposing several components of fruits and vegetables. A lot of nutrients are lost this way," says Suchde. The 31-year-old Peddar Road resident, who transits between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, has been conducting classes across the city for the last couple of months in an attempt to encourage more use of produce in homes.
"The restaurant industry is inclined towards a certain visual look and aesthetic, and, while prepping, chefs don't have a lot of time to invest in curtailing food wastage," says this food and beverage consultant. To get the perfect shaped French fry, she says, several ends and bits have to either end up as mash or go straight into the bin.
Arina Suchde
Talking to friends and elders in the family, and researching the subject since February, Suchde says that if the nose-to-tail concept for meats (which transforms into multi-course pop-up dinners) can work, then the root-to-shoot philosophy for fruits and vegetables is useful too. The question was, how to bring it into homes?
The most common produce that benefits from Suchde's no-wastage tips is the humble but versatile spud. While her family and she prefer leaving the skins on for various potato preparations like aloo sabji, she finds it more fun to make potato skin crisps, fried in olive oil or baked, and seasoned with garlic and herbs.
Another usual suspect, the lemon, can also be exploited, says Suchde. "Before you squeeze lemon, grapefruit or orange for their juice, it is a good practice to spend a couple of minutes scraping the zest off and storing it. You can use zest to make a lemon pepper dressing or a lemon coconut chutney," she says, adding that in Indian households, the concept of root-to-shoot has always existed. A Punjabi dish which uses the stalk and leaves of the cauliflower is one instance.
Among fruits, the peels of apples and pears can be harvested, but must be used immediately. "If you have a toddler at home and need to feed him/her some fruit mush, then chances are that the peels of these fruits will be left behind. You can infuse alcohol, such as vodka, with these," she says. Besides flavouring your drink, the peels of these fruits as well as orange rind can be boiled with water, spiced with a clove or cinnamon to make a fruit tea, which you can have either hot or cold.
"Paying attention to the optimum use of food produce only takes a few minutes. It doesn't slow down cooking, and if offers you the opportunity to try out something new," she says. The only hitch, she points out, is with fertilisers, in which case using peels as prime ingredients becomes a major hitch, and, therefore, organic fruits and vegetables are more suited for these experiments.
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