Trash talk: Mumbai-based chef Arina Suchde is a food-waste warrior
Joanna Lobo
A soup of potato skins. A carrot skin dip with corn silk water. Broccoli stalk sambhar. Carrot and oats taco. Give chef and mixologist Arina Suchde kitchen ‘waste’ and she will turn it into something beautiful.
Suchde, 33, is a strong advocate of better food choices through sustainable and all-natural practices. A vegetarian, she cooks root to shoot and eats ethically sourced foods. In the last few years, she has worked with restaurants to introduce zero-waste dishes in their menu, and conducts workshops showing people how to do the same at home. “I grew up in an environment where mom didn’t let any food or ingredients go waste. It is something most people have practiced in their kitchens for decades. Our generation just needs a reminder,” she says.
Root to shoot
Suchde was born in Mumbai and brought up in ‘the best of both worlds’ — her mother ran a catering business and her father was a distributor for liquor companies. “I grew up obsessed with food. One of the biggest reasons I chose to become a chef was so that I don’t have to depend on others for my meals,” she says. She began cooking by the age of nine by observing her mother, tasting everything and replicating dishes she ate outside home. She studied hotel management, got a bartending diploma, worked with a beverage consulting firm, and did a training programme in New York. Instead of working fulltime in the kitchen, she chose to focus on workshops, training and consulting gigs.
Her association with sustainability began in 2016. Living alone in Ahmedabad made her realise how much waste was going into her bin. She started using scraps and trimmings to create recipes, and did research by talking to friends’ mothers, aunts and grandmothers. “Every community already has different recipes and ideas for leftovers and scrap, like lauki ke chilka ke kofte, parwal ke chilke ki chutney and a lemon and orange peel chutney,” she says.
Next, she started taking workshops to put across this message in a fun, simple way. The first one was in Ahmedabad and she has since then held them across the country, educating people on how to make tea using corn silk, broccoli stalk salad and potato skin soup. “It is just a matter of changing your kitchen routine by 10-15 minutes, taking a step back and looking at the leftover components. Can I put it back in the same dish, or create an accompaniment, or freeze it and save it for later?” she says.
Her next step was to seek a better platform — restaurants, cafés and bars. A chance meeting with Sumit Gambhir, co-founder of Neighbourhood Hospitality, in 2018 and she began working with The Pantry, Mumbai. Initially, it was just about reducing wastage and turning scraps into accompaniments or toppings. Soon, it became a whole sustainable menu starring these scraps/leftovers. There were carrot oat tacos, using leftover pulp from their cold pressed juice; a beetroot tzatziki toast made with the residue pulp from beetroot juice; som tam salad with watermelon rinds; orange spice whey fermented soda using orange rinds, and whey discarded after making hung curd/cheese; and a detox tea with dehydrated pomegranate peels. “It’s easy to come up with a menu that’s fun. It doesn’t have to be preachy and serious all the time,” she says.
Waiter, there’s a fire in my drink
It was during her years of research that Suchde realised that the most waste was from the bar. She turned her attention there too. During her stint at The Farm in Chennai, Suchde took leftovers from the bar and put it back in their drinks and food. Recently, she did the same at Mumbai’s Woodside Inn creating Wasted, a sustainable menu with six cocktails. A Wheyski Sour uses whey from in-house ricotta for the ‘sour’ element, and orange syrup made from leftover orange rinds, and an orange rind dust. Another recipe uses home-grown Greater Than gin paired with a tonic made from the spent botanical used to make the liquor. These are the ‘normal’ drinks. Then there is corn off the cob, which has acorn milk vodka with a cordial of corn and lemon rind, served on a corn husk ‘coaster’. Sneaky Sundae is a boozy ‘dessert’ of a frozen banana peanut butter washed dark rum served in a waffle cone topped with banana peel oleo and candied banana peels. “The whole point is that you take these leftovers [like banana peels] and treat them as a normal ingredient,” she says.
Suchde takes sustainability seriously, beyond just food and drink — she uses public transport, and doesn’t use an AC or shower, among other things. “You have to take it one step at a time. In my case, it started with food and drink and I decided to translate that to other aspects of my life,” she says. “Being sustainable requires an effort.”
