Heritage Harvest, a millet festival, was recently organised by Goa Culinary Club at the Fern Kadamba hotel in north Goa. Starred hotels including Hilton Goa Resort, The Fern Kadamba, Chef’s Peter’s Kitchen and Soul Chef participated in the event.
The club also invited local women from Pilerne and Saligao to showcase their products made out of millet.
Co-founder of Goa Culinary Club Odette Mascarenhas said that the Year of the Millet 2023 is over and people are gradually forgetting the importance of this super grain and its use in the future. So to revive its golden days, the Goa Culinary Club together with chefs from starred hotels have brought back the millet heritage creatively on the plate.
Mascarenhas explained, “It’s not just the run-of-the-mill nachni bhakri or basic khichdi. We have dishes crafted creatively to give you a new improved sense of taste for your palate. This is especially beneficial for parents as children of today desire a variety in food preparations.”
She added, “Water scarcity is the major challenge that we will face in the future and to get our children palate-ready to the healthy grain is important.”
“We have dodol made out of ragi. Brownies, cakes, croissants and even cheese are prepared using millets. It’s difficult to taste the difference. I was awe-struck with the dishes cooked to taste exactly the same as with other grains. We have Hilton Goa Resort who came up with their signature ‘pookie’, which is a cookie made in ‘poi’ style using ragi instead of wheat flour. One of the chefs cooked hakka noodles made of millets which is a good alternative to instant noodles,” said Mascarenhas, a connoisseur in Goan cuisine.
A millet recipe booklet with a collection of 20 recipes by expert chefs was also available during the fest. These recipes are a great help for home cooks to prepare dishes using millets. Organic store Koshaa showcased a variety of millets that extended beyond nachni and bajri.
Chef Jason DeSouza, co-founder of White Plate by Chef Jason, said, “Through this festival, we are reviving the cuisines that our ancestors made in Goa,” adding that it was the way to eliminate old school ways of cooking using maida, wheat, rice and incorporate modern methods with millets.
Fern Kadamba, area general manager, Rajeev Kumar said, “This festival is an amalgamation of Indian cuisine and healthy millets crafted creatively to soothe the modern palate.”
Some of the dishes at the festival included ragi sojji, ragi makhana smoothie, amaranth ladoo with dry nuts, foxtail pulao, foxtail millet Jadoh, a Meghalaya dish where ‘ja’ means rice and ‘doh’ means meat; buckwheat momo and ragi pizza.
Music and games entertained people and kept the festive mood flowing.
