Thursday, 20 JULY 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
With culinary skill and resolve to promote millets and special cuisine of Uttarakhand, a native of Tehri Garhwal Kuldeep is making the people of New York taste dishes prepared with the mountain grains used as principal ingredients. He says he has been inspired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami –both are promoting millets aggressively. “I believe that PM Modi is right in averring that millet is going to be a food choice for future and the way the people of New York are relishing the dishes prepared with the mountain ingredients, the coarse grains in particular, is encouraging me to carry on with my mission of promoting the traditional grains of Uttarakhand across the world,” he said.
Kuldeep is working as a senior chef in a restaurant in New York. He had prepared pahadi dishes at the celebrated James Beard Foundation Institute in New York which promotes culinary arts and innovative potential of the chefs congregating there from across the world. “I am happy that my childhood dream of experimenting with mountain cuisine and dishing it out to the people abroad is being realised now,” he said and added that the dishes prepared by him include mandua roti, bajra chapati and bhang chutney. “By incorporating these in their daily diets, the people are enhancing their health,” he said.
He further said that not just the Americans but the NRIs settled in New York are appreciating the taste of the millet-based foods being served to them. “I am sure that the farmers of our State will derive benefits from what I have been doing now-promoting the diversified agricultural assets of Uttarakhand abroad. This may also slow down the pace of migration from the hills of the State,” he said.
He appealed to the young people of India and particularly those from Uttarakhand to include millets in their daily diets. “And those associated with agriculture should produce coarse grains in increasing volume. This will result in sustainable agricultural development and diversification of crops aside from benefitting the producers financially through exports,” Kuldeep said.
