This chronicle tells the little or the big story behind our food, dishes or chefs. Powerful weapon soft power, A societal and cultural marker, food is the founding element of our civilizations. Conflicts, diplomacy, traditions, cuisine has always had a political dimension. Because, as Bossuet already said in the 17th century, “it is at the table that we govern”.
Between the airport and downtown New Delhi, which is hosting the G20, not a shadow of a beggar or a piece of paper on the ground. But 250 portraits of the Indian Prime Minister carefully plastered along the route taken by heads of state from around the world to reach the sumptuous Congress Palace which has just been built. On September 9, 2023, Narendra Modi wants to promote India’s international influence. A major diplomatic rally that he uses as a propaganda tool, a few weeks before the legislative elections which are currently taking place, from April 19 to June 1, during which he is seeking a third term.
The protocol for a meeting at this level is meticulously taken care of. At the dinner, on the right is Indian Prime Minister Joe Biden, who has just arranged a sumptuous state visit to the White House four months earlier. To his left, Emmanuel Macron, who made him the last guest of honor at the July 14 parade in Paris. But unusually for this type of state dinner, it is a vegetarian meal which is served to reflect the diversity of India’s “traditions, customs and climates”. If the main course is a “jackfruit pancake served with glazed forest mushrooms” as well as “Kerala rice with curry leaves”, a grass dominates the rest of the menu: millet or millet.
That evening, this cereal, cultivated for more than four and a half thousand years in Africa, had its moment of glory at the table of the most powerful leaders in the world, sublimated by the chef: “crispy millet leaves garnished with ‘a sphere of yoghurt and a millet pudding flavored with cardamom’. On the menu, India touts all the benefits of this “super food” grown “in unfavorable and arid environments” and which can in the future play an important role in the face of “climate change and for food security”, which is under threat. by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
A song with Modi on millet
Since coming to power in 2014, vegetarian Narendra Modi has had a dream: to make millet a global food “fad”. Like the incredible marketing that Latin countries have managed to do with quinoa. If India is the world’s leading producer of millet (15 million tonnes per year), the government led by the Hindu nationalist leader clearly wants to flood world markets with this cereal. gluten free and more protein than rice.
In 2022, the Indian Prime Minister celebrated, in a tweet, the Grammy Award for Best Children’s Music Album awarded to Falguni Shah, an Indian-American singer. He then invites him for a meeting and gives him the idea of creating a song to extol the merits of this grass that some see as one of the solutions to fight world hunger. The singer then offers him to participate in the title Abundance in Millets where lyrics from a speech by Narendra Modi are embedded.
If the Prime Minister obviously has no intention of starting a musical career, he above all wants to stimulate his economy by pushing Indian farmers to plant this very nourishing seed. It was also on a proposal from India that the UN declared 2023 the “International Year of Millets”. THE soft power from New Delhi paid.
Millet genome sequenced for the first time
India knows it: it is sitting on a pile of gold. These small round seeds already constitute the basis of the daily diet of at least 100 million people, particularly in the Sahel and northern India. And its share is likely to grow in the future when we know that Africa will have nearly 2.5 billion inhabitants in 2050…
In 2017, researchers from the Research Institute for Development (IRD) succeeded in sequencing the genome of this seed with 38,000 genes, which grows quickly and thrives in soils lacking in water. They then established the precise “identity sheets” of nearly 1,000 different varieties of existing cultivated or wild millet in order to be able to create new species better adapted to increasing temperatures and more resistant to pests.
When we observe the damage today from El Niño and heatwaves in Africa in particular, we say to ourselves that millet has a great card to play on the planet… Large companies have sniffed out the business. Nestlé, Britannia Industries, Tata Consumer Products are already creating millet-based products, such as cereals, biscuits and pancake mixes…
Millet on the Michelin-starred menu
Gradually, this cereal, which has long been forgotten on gastronomic tables, is gaining its reputation. The White House chef subtly integrated millet into the menu of a salad as an appetizer during Narendra Modi’s last state visit in June 2023. In their hotel during the last G20, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife were treated to the full variation: millet pasta, millet and mango tart and fudge (American chocolate confectionery) and millet brownies.
The cereal is also starting to appear in Michelin-starred restaurants. In Dubai, chef Rahul Rana ofAvatara (1 Michelin star) sublimates it wonderfully in the 16 succulent vegetarian dishes on the menu, inspired by the different culinary traditions of India.
All these great chefs are today haunted by a question: will climate change still allow them to cook? Won’t the ingredients they use every day become a luxury? Or will they disappear altogether?
It is in this context that Modi’s ancestral millet seed has a chance to find a place. In France, the great chefs Michel and Sébastien Bras have already adopted it on their Aubrac plateaus among the fifty seeds, seeds, legumes, cereals, oilseeds and umbellifers that they work with every day in their kitchen. To the point of making it, as they say, the new “culinary alphabet” of tomorrow?
For further :
A book : The great book of Indian cuisineSandra Salmandjee, Johanna Fritz, Aimery Chemin, Mango, 2020.
Where to eat Indian?
Jugaad, 16, rue Favard, 75002 Paris
Krishna Bhavan, 24, rue Cail 75010 Paris
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