The May sun beats down as chef Lokesh Swami walks through a spinach patch at the Chemon Estate in south Delhi. He is here to chat with the farmers to check if the leaves are young. In a few hours, a fresh batch of spinach and kale will travel 10 km to reach NicoCaara, a restaurant in Chanakyapuri.

The spinach will go into the making of the Baked Ricotta and Ricotta Gnocchi; the kale will sit in a nest of leafy salad next to the salmon. NicoCaara, co-partnered by entrepre-neur Ambika Seth (culinary expert Alice Helme is the other partner), is a restaurant specialising in seasonal cuisine that procures its veggies from Seth’s Chemon Estate farm, besides another farm in Nuh, 25 km away, and several other local suppliers, all of whom are on Swami and Seth’s WhatsApp contact-list.

“We plan our menu according to farmers’ alerts. It’s a two-way conversation really,” says the chef as we walk around the Chemon farm. “In August, we will start planning for our winter menu and the farmers will start getting the soil ready to grow the purple radishes, cabbages and carrots. They will be ready by October.” And if they are not? Swami says

the Caara philosophy is not to force the land to give more yield but to sustain a healthy food culture in its restaurants (there are three in Delhi) and the health of its fields.

Swami is a farm boy himself. A follower of Ayurveda, he maintains his own two-acre farm in west Delhi. Fruits and vegetables also “have skin, they breathe, if pumped with chemicals, they harm. This is why we change our menu frequently. Caara’s vegetables are grown completely chemical-free. Whatever the land has to offer in season, we accept”, he says. There is a need to love even “imperfect vegetables”, says Seth who drops in by appointment at the restaurant. “There is also no chance of getting cauliflower as soup or as a side in this season. But what you will get is sweet potato,” she adds.Food in summer is also being made interesting with lashes of Caara’s home-made sauces such as the Basil pesto, which is used liberally in pastas and salads or on sourdough rye bread. “The bottled sauces have no preservatives. You need to finish up within a week,” the chef advises a guest who wants to buy a pesto bottle “to keep”. The kitchen is, in fact, Swami’s lab for trial and error with various ingredients, and to try out different pairings. Recently, he infused hummus with chironji seeds. A summer twist was also given to the traditional Mediterranean mozzarella and tomato salad by using an Indian burratta (cow milk cheese) with a mango salsa. He does not consider this changing the grammar of the dish. “We are all for upping the local content of our food. That’s our everydaypractice,” he says.Recipe of Baked Ricotta gnocchiIngredients: Make the ricotta gnocchi with ricotta cheese --100 gm, boiled potato- 30 gm, blanched spinach - 60 gm, bread crumbs - 10 gm, salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg powder. Make the tomato coulis/paste with fresh tomatoes - 200 gm, cherry tomatoes - 50 gm, onion - 50 gm, garlic - 10 gm, basil - a handful, olive oil, salt, pepper. Make the cheese fondue with Zarai cheese -40 gm, cream - 50 gm, nutmeg , a pinch, milk - 50 gm, salt, white pepper. .

Method: Mix all the ingredients of gnocchi and make a quenelle shape (an egg-like shape), and put into the refrigerator. For the fresh tomato coulis, heat a pan, add olive oil, chopped garlic and sauté till translucent. Add chopped onion and cook another five to seven minutes. Add fresh and cherry tomatoes. For the cheese fondue, warm milk and cream together and add Zarai cheese and mix well, add seasoning and keep aside to cool. Assemble in a round bowl. Tomato sauce should be the bottom layer, then add the ricotta quenelle and cover with fondue cheese and bake for 10 minutes. Garnish with cherry tomato, crispy potato and fresh basil leaves on top. Serve hot.

From the farm to the chef’s tableThe farm-to-table movement seems to have converted city chefs to endorse local produce in a big way. Some of the strongest steps towards sustainability are...

Friday, May 10, 2019

When is a chef more than just a chef? When he can look at a basket of fresh vegetables and know who is responsible. To have a direct link with the supply chain, and even know the farmer by face so as to exchange information on what is growing and when, is no more a USP but a given.

There is indeed, an increasing tribe of chefs in the cities that is liter-ally sourcing from the farm to serve at the table. Eating fresh produce directly from the land near the home goes back to the beginning of time in all cultures.

“The rebirth of the farm-to-fork movement since the mid ’80s in the West has been a conscious move away from processed foods. The emphasis has been on a good working relationship with farmers, clean soil-water environment for the growth of artisanal produce, and fair prices,” says Alice Helme, a culinary expert who works in between Delhi and London and is co-partner at a café chain in Delhi. “It has turned fashionable recently because we have lost the ability to trace where our food comes from.”

Food columnist and author Anoothi Vishal says India became aware of the global farm-to-the-table movement, also called the hyperlo-cal trend, 15 years ago. But it is only in the last two to five years that younger chefs and food entrepreneurs who may have interned inEuropean restaurants or studied abroad returned to India to realise

that the ground had been laid for them to get serious about this. “Everything had started to come together – customer awareness about the carbon footprint of food; social media platforms like Instagram became a place to project being in tune with times not just in what you were wearing but what you were eating or cooking as well; small farmers ready to grow seasonal produce in sustainable ways and hotel and restaurant chefs ready to patronise them.”

It is now part of conventional wisdom that the ‘modern’ way is to source locally. The Jaipur lamb, and the camembert from Mumbai are now as much stacked in the restaurant kitchen pantry as the New Zealand lamb and the Italian parmesan. At least 60-80 per cent of the produce (from veggies to animal and dairy products) of quality city restaurants is being sourced locally. Not one chef will do otherwise. We profile four of those who live this credo.

Chef Lokesh Swami holds up a plated dish of Baked Ricotta Gnocchi made fromlocal produce at the restaurant NicoCaara in New Delhi. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Chef Lokesh Swami, corporate chef, CAARA, picking his choice ofvegetables at the Chemon Estate farm, Delhi. ( Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO )