If you are one of those people who have always wanted to try millets and didn’t know where to start, head to Locavores in Kochi, where you can learn a thing or two about the grain.
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The two-day programme, which includes a cooking workshop and a mixer event packed with a live quiz, a salad bar and community potluck, celebrates millets and helps us reconnect with them.
millets millets | Photo Credit: 10016
Over the past year and a half, The Locavore, a community that has been championing ethical food practices and conscious eating, has been engaged in a millet revival project along with Rainmatter Foundation, an organisation that supports projects for climate action. The revival project aims to promote a holistic understanding of millets — how we eat them, where it is grown, who grows them…. “Through community engagement, partnerships, travel and events, we have adopted a multifaceted approach to bring millets to the mainstream,” says Chef Thomas Zac, founder of The Locavore. “Though millets have been a part of the food culture in Kerala, over the years, they disappeared from its foodscape. We want to bring them back into the diet,” he adds.
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The Locavore and Rainmatter Foundation have conducted similar millet meetups in Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi and Shillong. By demystifying cooking with millets and highlighting their health benefits and environmental sustainability, they hope to help people incorporate millets into their daily diets.
According to a report from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, in 2021-22, Kerala ranked 20th in millet production in India; and there is an increased interest in millets among the people. “The idea is to explore this interest and inspire more people to look at millets as a sustainable food choice,” says Zac.
The first part of the event, Mingle with Millets, will have a workshop, where participants can learn new recipes, combining traditional and modern techniques. For instance, you could learn how to make a traditional Malayali dish such as the paalputtu with millets or how to bake a millet cake. The event will include a panel discussion on interventions in sustainable development and millet projects.
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millets millets | Photo Credit: 10016
The event will also bring together various stakeholders including producers, FMCG brands, and those from the food and beverage space.
The second event, Kochi’s Millet Mixer, promises to be a fun event with a millet-themed quiz, an interactive millet salad bar, and the Locavore shuffle, where participants get to take part in guided conversations with strangers on topics such as food memories, identity, and local markets. It would also have a millet tasting experience, where you get to sample a range of millet-based dishes from local food brands, home chefs, restaurants, and professional chefs.
Mingle with Millets will be held on July 20, 3.30pm to 7pm at French Toast, Chittoor Road. (To register, log on to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10uyYtyxbzaJNSRScRKeBoDXAAi_wypIT8l8CwG1jJm).
The Millet Mixer will be held on July 21 at Yacht Club, 4.30pm onwards.
(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10uyYtyxbzaJNSRScRKeBoDXAAi_wypIT8l8CwG1jJmk)