Follow a zero-wastage policy in your kitchen; here’s what to do with the leftovers
Of the many myths that surround food and its cooking in India, one of the most fascinating and intriguing story is one about the making of taar kaliya in a Mughal kitchen. According to the story, the cook would mix some portion of the leftover curry (or fat) into the next day’s preparation, in a ritual to ensure perhaps consistency of flavour. This process is supposed to have continued, incredibly, through many generations of curries doled out!
Of course, it is just a story. An impossible one really. And merely underlines the mystique around food in India and the reverence with which we treated it. It is also a strange story in many ways because it goes against the traditional rituals of eating in a country typically obsessed with the notion of jhootha/impure food leftover after a meal. In traditional homes across communities, leftovers were always discarded, never eaten even for the next meal — sensible no doubt in pre-refrigeration days. Of course, certain foods were exempt: dishes like kadhi and biryani have always been believed to taste better the morning after.
Recycle the Leftovers
Once refrigerators made an appearance in middle India, the seemingly extravagant rituals of disposing of everything not consumed at the same meal were quick to be shaken off in the face of a more forceful waste-not-want-not mentality. And an entire generation is today nostalgic about breakfasts concocted by innovative mothers who would stuff paranthas with leftover subzi, crumble dry-ing idlis into upma and make patties with dal and chawal, as a Facebook friend tells me.
While it is of course desirable to eat fresh food always, modern technology enables us to reprocess leftovers much more innovatively today than consigning them to the dustbin. My mother used to trick us into snacking on some very interesting tikkis made from leftover khichdi, and it is only recently that I came across the Italian version of the same trick!
Lunching with Ritu Dalmia at her recently refurbished restaurant, Diva, I come across arancine, the delicious, crispy, Sicilian anti-pasti. It is only later that Ritu told me the rice balls are and can be made with leftover risotto. In fact, at home, you don’t have to even wait to make/bring back a doggie bag of risotto; arancine work just as well with any leftover Indian rice preparation: Mix an egg (or maida for binding) and grate some cheese into the rice; make it into small rounds and fry.
In fact, Ritu gleefully gives me more tips: leftover sautéed mushroom from a pasta sauce can be puréed and blended into stock for homemade soup; leftover sauces such as the simple béchamel or tomato can be slathered on to any bread for crostini. But best of all, stale bread can be rolled out thin and put in the oven to brown to give you melba toast. This also stays for longer.
Stale Mate Leftover rotis and paranthas can be put to various uses (though you could be like me and actually prefer them stale!). For instance, I often make Mughalai paranthas, out of these. Just beat eggs, add chopped onions, green chillies and fresh coriander as you would for a masala omelette; heat the rotis on a non-stick pan with a dash of oil; pour out the egg mix on one side of the roti/parantha and turn over so that the egg cooks.
Fusion Formula
But one of the most innovative uses of the stale parantha that I have come across is by way of a soufflé that Arun Kumar, who has himself made a very interesting transition from being a film-maker to professional chef running the chain of Zambar restaurants, recommends. Chop up the p a r a n t h a / M a l a b a r parantha, add cream and sugar, some raisins and nuts and beat it up well. Stir in some gelatin, put it in a mould and set. Serve! Leftover dough, says Arun, can be transformed into addictive munchies by mixing in different spices/flavours like chilli powder, green coriander chutney et al, rolling this out, cutting into thin strips and baking. Serve it with any dip.
In the UK, where “bhangra burgers” used to be popular street eats, Asian homes did a bit of fusion cooking of their own with leftover curry blended with cheese to make a sandwich and the like.
Möbius’ chef Mayank Tiwari suggests innovations on the same lines: shred the meat (or paneer) from leftover curry and blend with a mix of mayo and any chutney or kashundi. Add leftover greens like that aloo-palak for fibre and texture and freshen it up with fresh lettuce or sliced tomatoes. You have an exciting sandwich ready. Any meats from cashew and poppy-seeds “white” gravies could be used in salads. And the chef adds that any leftover kofta could be crumbled, mixed with feta, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and fruit for a brilliant salad.
Finally, as my many Facebook friends point out, almost everything can be reasonably recycled: stews and curries into pies (just do a home-made crust, dry up the stew and fill it in), rotis into khakhra, veggies into paranthas, rice into lemon or curd or ‘fried’ rice, dal into chillas, pastas into bake, chicken curry into instant biryani and so on. Let your imagination run.
BEST OUT OF WASTE
ITC Maurya’s chef Manisha Bhasin, mother to two growing children, is fanatical when it comes to feeding the kids homemade stuff. Obviously, she innovates all the time and suggests:
1 Mix potato flour (readily available these days) with leftover gobhi subzi and the like for crispy tikkis
2 Make sandwiches from leftover roast or tandoori bites
3 Make homestyle spaghetti bolognaise from leftover keema (just toss it with the pasta)
4 Make nutritious dal paranthas from leftover dal
5 Freeze all the mithai that comes home and lies uneaten. Crumble it to use as khoya in things like gajar ka halwa or stuffing in meetha parantha
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