From pearl millet mango pudding to Achari Paneer tikka, chef Anahita Dhondy knows how to whip millets into surprising shapes. They’re just two out an array of dishes in her weekly Millet Monday Instagram stories, her initiative to get more people interested in the ancient grain that was once a daily staple across India and many parts of the world.
“I honestly love the grain,” she says. “I know it’s good for the planet, the farmer and the consumer.”
Not only is it one of the most nutritious grains available, but also: “It uses one-tenth of the water used for the production of wheat or rice. That’s why it’s a very sustainable crop,” she stresses. And a perfect one for a future in which we will need to produce more food with fewer natural resources.
Based in Gurgaon, India, Anahita is one of dozens of cooks around the world taking part in this year’s Chef’s Challenge, an initiative started by Fulani chef Fatmata Binta to promote the International Year of Millets. The concept is simple: each chef shares their favourite millet recipe on social media and then tags other chefs to do the same. Followers, too, are invited to join in.
As a nomadic pastoral people in northern Africa, the Fulani kitchen is built around foods that are available in arid and semi arid environments, which includes Fonio, a small type of millet. Fatmata, who was born in Sierra Leone but lives in Ghana, is keenly aware how scarce water is in many rural communities.
“We need to do more with the limited, precious water we have,” she says. “That’s why fonio has so much potential. It can grow in dry climates and with poor soil and still provide nourishing food for people.”
As the first African to receive the Basque Culinary World Prize in 2022, she recently set up the Fulani Kitchen Foundation and today supports women who want to cultivate fonio as an additional income source.
In addition to cooking with water-wise millets, Italian chef Max Mariola – who treated his 1.6 million Instagram followers to a colourful millets and mussels dish for the Chef’s Challenge – tries to limit food and water waste in his kitchen wherever he can. That includes reusing water from washing vegetables and millets to water plants, he says.
Without water it would be impossible to do my job” he says. “So just like I always say, ‘don’t waste food’, we equally should not waste water.”
“I know it can be troublesome”, says Anahita, who also reuses kitchen water, “but it’s important to take that extra step and conserve as much as possible. Because water is life.”
