FOOD SPECIAL...MAKE THE BEST FROM LEFTOVERS

Born-again biryani

Searching for a way to beat the price-rise and against wasting food? Look no further than last night’s leftovers

In these inflationary times when food prices have skyrocketed, it might be wise to view leftovers more respectfully. At hand to help are various cookbooks, cooking classes and blogs that propagate creative ways to transform leftover chawal, dal, roti and sabzi. “Go ahead, experiment — no one will even realise that your salad wraps and pizza uttapams have their origins in mundane leftovers!” suggests Tarla Dalal on her blog.
The idea is not new. Aroona Reejhsinghani wrote the cook book Tasty Dishes from Waste Items back in 1973. She says that people have always cooked leftovers, even before the advent of refrigerators when prepared food was stored in wet earthen pots covered with muslin. The Sindhi dish seyal mani is a classic example of thrifty cooking. It’s a combination of shredded leftover chapattis that are cooked in a spicy gravy of coriander, curd and tomato.
Apart from reducing waste and thus saving money, reusing leftovers saves time and energy. Rajkumari Nahata conducts cooking classes on leftovers on request in Mumbai. Nahata says, “Cooking with leftovers is about efficiency. It saves time and energy of cooks by giving a different face to the food.” The participants in her class are primarily housewives and students slated to travel abroad.
Naini Setalvad, a nutritionist and obesity consultant, says, “Cooking with leftovers may not be the best for health because food tends to lose its nutrition by heating. However, it is better than junk food. Moreover, it can be made healthier by adding fresh vegetables.”
Reejhsinghani goes a step further by advocating the use of peels and seeds of fruits and vegetables. Normally discarded, peels and seeds, she says, are healthier than the flesh. “I use peels of karela, radish and orange, watermelon seeds, coriander stems, and remains of other fruits and vegetables that people throw away, to concoct delicious recipes,” she says.
A crucial aspect of cooking with leftovers is preserving them in the right manner to avoid any kind of food poisoning or spoilage. “Preserve boiled rice and cooked chapattis in sterilised airtight containers in the chiller and not the freezer compartment,” Reejhsinghani advises. She warns against re-chilling and re-using the leftover food once taken out from the chiller and suggests that leftovers should be thawed after taking them out from the chiller before reheating it or giving it a different form.
Sushma Kankaria, a housewife and mother of two kids in Ahmedabad, routinely cooks leftovers, from transforming khichdi into paratha to frying leftover rotis into nachos chips. “My husband is a food aficionado and my kids are finicky about food,” she says. “But they never come to know about the change in form of food.” She offers two tips: refrying leftovers with cumin seeds, gingergarlic paste and onion to restore their freshness and garnishing the dishes with coriander leaves to make them presentable. Whether it is converting leftover rotis into frankies and quesadillas, reusing paneer sabzi and other vegetables in wraps, rolls, pav-bhaji and kebabs, making sandwiches out of last night’s roast chicken, giving a new avatar to cooked pasta in salads and pasta-cheese balls, or reusing boiled rice in various biryanis, theplas and muthiyas, the list of born again leftovers is endless.
(SMITA PRANAV KOTHARI TOICREST100725)