Chef Michael Swamy recounts his experiences of Forest cooking or Cooking wild at Pugdundee Safaris and how it connects local cuisines to nature
Cooking wild is a culinary experience that Chef Michael Swamy created along with a few resorts across India. Its more enforced at Pugdundee where guests are taken on a magical journey of the wild through food. We help them connect with nature and how nature helps in the cultivation of the foods we eat. You sit in the organic garden and watch the butterflies and the birds flit about. You hear the shrill calls of the birds as they waken in the morning. The hunt for food begins within the garden and all around it. A gigantic hornbill drops by to steal a tomato.
The orange thrush searches the undergrowth for some worms. The bee eaters have their timings set for hovering around to capture some of the bees and dragonflies that are in their multitudes pollinating the flowering plants that are within the organic garden. Head off the property and the farms next door are almost bereft of the magical world of birds and insects that play a major role in the growth cycle of life.
In times of recession it’s all about targeting high-end users. The change has been happening from terrace gardens to bankers and professionals turning to gardening and growing their own produce for themselves and for sale. Hotels and restaurants too are growing their own produce. Chefs are turning farmers to create produce for their restaurants
At the lodges you will find herbs like wild mint, basil, dill on the property along with a variety of lettuce, tomatoes, pumpkins, carrots, radish, cauliflower, zucchini and eggplant (brinjal). The latest edition has been micro-greens for salads and breads and parathas besides just making a dish look pretty. The economics of using organic produce just does not justify the creation of complete meals as yet, maybe in the future.
A way of Life
Creating exotic dishes out of simple ingredients and changing the mindset of consumers takes time. Breakfast dishes of fresh papaya and fruit from the garden to roasted and stuffed green heirloom tomatoes to pumpkin soup or creating desserts using the vegetables grown in the garden has become a way of life in the Pugdundee kitchens.
Cooking wild is a return to nature and the local cuisine. From special dinners in the outdoors within the property the guest are treated to a farm house dinner or the local tribal cuisine. The flavour palate of the tribal cuisine of the Gonds and the Baigas is mostly savoury and bland with hints of spiciness given the use of certain herbs. Originally foragers, they now practise agriculture. However, for a very long time (centuries) their only source of “sweet”’ was honey. Hence you see sweets prepared only occasionally in Gond homes across MP. In Maharashtra however, Gonds have been cultivating sugarcane and also mastered jaggery making, so their food also has a sweet flavour profile.
Simple seasonal ingredients mostly foraged from the forests is the MP Gonds’ characteristic. They are known to be in possession of deep botanical knowledge that helps them use plants, roots and tubers for their medicinal properties. However, this knowledge is fiercely guarded.
Their staples are millets known as “kodo” and “kutki”. Kodo (barnyard millet) and “kutki” (also known as little millet) made into a congee of sorts with a little salt added. Or it’s made into a khichri. They are also ground into flour and used to make a thin broth or flat griddle breads.
Tribal cuisine
Chef Michael Swamy said that another ingredient they used in times of famine was bamboo rice which the tribals gathered from the forests. This was ground to flour and used in the same way as kodo and kutki. Though sweets are rarely made, one of the special dishes made in Gond homes are Mahua laddoos – made by crushing dried mahua flowers, kneading them with crumbled jaggery and shaping them into lime-sized balls.
A rare dish they make is a chutney from roselle flowers. Called “Amaadi ki chutney”, it consists of roselle petals crushed with fresh coriander seeds, salt and chilies (before chilies came to India, certain foraged herbs were used instead). Roselle has been used as a souring agent by the tribals of MP since long before tomatoes made their appearance during Portuguese rule.
The tribals also used mahua oil for cooking and as medicine till about half a century ago. The oil originally is quite bitter and when required for cooking, it was heated with curry leaves. The curry leaves absorbed the bitterness. When the curry leaves were burned to a crisp, the oil was filtered and used for cooking.
One of the major preservation techniques still used is sun-drying. Most grains and some vegetables are sun-dried. As far as cooking techniques go, roasting, grilling and boiling are the prevalent. A special technique used to make a bread called “Tikkad Roti” calls for the use of camel foot leaves and cow dung cakes. To make the rotis, semi stiff dough is patted on one half of a camel foot leaf, the other half is pressed over it to enclose the dough. This then placed and baked over burning dung cakes. When serving, the burnt leaf is removed. These rotis are served at the Kanha Earth Lodge. Though not made as a craft, very old Gond homes still use ladles and bowls made of dried gourds.
