It’s the year of the millets but Mumbai’s restaurants have been exploring with them for some time now. City chefs are not only experimenting with different types of grains in their food but also altering the form in Indian as well as dishes from around the world
At Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, chef Rahul Punjabi uses millets to make Chicken tikka, Pearl Barley Khichdi, Foraged Grain. Photo Courtesy: Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra
Mumbai-based chef Vanika Choudhary is currently fermenting two different kinds of millets at her city restaurant Noon. The city chef, who is the founder of two BKC restaurants, the other being Sequel, has been using millets since she started both her restaurants in the city in the last one year and seven years respectively. She explains, "For finger millet miso, we have taken the whole millet, ambemohar rice koji and fermented it for six months to make a sweet miso which is used in desserts. Another kind of millet miso that we are experimenting with is proso millet with Kashmiri red chillies from my parent's garden in Jammu, we have fermented this for a year and the result is this bold, earthy, slightly spicy and deeply umami flavour. No one has ever made miso using a millet."