Tag: indian

In an Indian school, lessons are paid for with recycled plastic – Italian Cuisine

In an Indian school, students pay for their lessons with plastic waste to be recycled and receive innovative professional educational training in environmental education

In Dispur, the capital of the Assam region in the north east ofIndia, there is a truly innovative school, the Akshar Forum school, which is laying the foundations for a possible new and innovative method of teaching in Indian public schools and beyond. First of all Akshar students, instead of paying their tuition, are asked to deliver 25 plastic items a week for recycling (for a total of about 10 thousand objects per month), coming from household waste or those of the neighborhood. But the particularity of this school, one sustainability best practice which has attracted the attention of the international media press does not end there. In fact, at the Akshar Forum school, people are taught to respect the environment and to recycle, but at the same time they guarantee aprofessional environmental education and unconventional teaching methods are adopted, also aimed at combating child labor.

A new school concept, to save young people and the environment

According to the local non-governmental organization, the city of Dispur alone, which has just over a million inhabitants, produces almost 40 tons of waste per day; as if that weren't enough, the local population has the habit of burning much of the plastic used, causing highly toxic fumes. An alarming situation, which drew the attention of Mukhtar & Sarma, the young couple who in 2016 raised funds and financing from private donors to manage this school project. The goal, from the beginning, was to give life to a free school accessible to all that could stem the social and ecological problems of the area as much as possible, at the same time laying the foundations for an experimental and potentially replicable initiative elsewhere. The school, completely free, has included a recycling center, but the parents were reluctant to make a contribution in terms of household waste, precisely because they preferred to burn it at home. From there came the idea of introducing a mandatory tax which consisted of either a payment in money or the delivery of plastic waste. This policy of alternative tuition quickly took hold, so much so that it was quickly accepted by all parents.

Starting from the bottom to form the eco warriors of the future

The school currently has over a hundred students, aged between 4 and 15. Many of them, before starting school, were laborers at nearby stone quarries, where they made about $ 2.50 a day. Mukhtar & Sarma, in addition to the ecological cause, also had at heart the one linked to fight against child labor and in this sense too they have come up with an unconventional solution. They devised a one-of-a-kind learning model by recruiting kids who could tutor the children and establishing a reward system for students that consisted of fake banknotes to use in local stores to buy snacks, clothes, shoes or toys. . The monetary incentive, which goes hand in hand with the achievement of academic results, is proving to be a powerful motivator for the community. In this way, children are motivated to go to school and welcome it with interest professional environmental training which is made available to them; the students, in fact, attend carpentry and electronics workshops, learn to install solar panels and, above all, carry out outdoor recycling, for example transforming waste plastic supplied by households into ecological bricks. Thanks to this project, the children have convinced their families not to burn plastic anymore, and in general in the community there is a greater awareness of environmental issues and a greater sense of responsibility. In short, the success and positive impact of Akshar's school model have been such that the government has decided to entrust Mukhtar & Sarma with five other schools, and it is not excluded that this is only the beginning of a great change at the national level. .

Whatever happens in India, this initiative is the demonstration that, thanks to a few simple school and training initiatives, much can be done to transform the new generations into eco warriors champions of the environment and sustainability.

Photo: Indian plastic recycling school_dhakatribune.jpg

Endless Indian row in the supermarket? Here is the app to avoid it – Italian Cuisine

It's called FilaIndiana.it and reports in real time which are the longest queues in front of supermarkets in your area

All queuing, at a safe distance, trying to avoid gatherings even while turning between the shelves. L'Covid-19 coronavirus emergency not only did it congest most online shopping for home delivery services, but it also changed our habits at supermarket. Because if until a few weeks ago an attempt was made to avoid peak times, in order not to risk excessive waiting in front of the cured meat and cheese counter, today the precautionary measures against contagion require staggered entries. Moral: often and willingly to be able to enter your reference supermarket you have to also wait 15-30 minutes, queuing up in front of the main door armed with patience and trolley.

Yeah, right in single file, as Fulvio Bambusi and Andrea Torrone seem to underline, who, taking inspiration from the problems of these days, have decided to inaugurate a site capable of reporting us in real time what the expectations are in front of each supermarket. FilaIndiana.itin fact. By accessing the web app in question – and allowing the geolocation of smartphones or computers – it is in fact possible to explore through one interactive map the various supermarkets in your area, marked with an estimated tail length.

Once in line, then, it is possible to contribute personally to the functioning of the system itself, simply by registering with the button «I'm in line here. The more people who use FilaIndiana.it, therefore, the more accurate and correct your information will be. Currently the service, as recalls the Corriere della Sera, is only available in Lombardy, but could soon be extended to other Italian regions as well.

Masque: the new wave of Indian cuisine – Italian Cuisine

Chef Prateek Shadu's Mumbai restaurant wins my Miele One To Watch 2020 pre dedicated to new kitchen talents. And it puts India on the map of international fine dining

Talking about Indian cuisine is like talking about Italian cuisine: a somewhat superficial generalization. Ten times larger than our country, it extends thousands of kilometers, like from Sicily to Denmark. It is the seventh largest country in the world, has over 1.3 billion inhabitants, but for the rest of the planet – including us – it eats curry and samosa. Seen from Italy, 6500 kilometers away, knowledge arrives for stereotypes and it is easier to see the least common denominators rather than the very wide differences.

The cuisine is as vast and different as the Himalayas in the north and the Tropic of Cancer in the south, still alive and cooked in the houses, shopping is done at the market, frozen and ready meals are non-existent: whether you eat outside or in the restaurant, it's all done from scratch, as tradition dictates. "India first" it was the slogan with which the current prime minister won the elections and it is undeniable that nationalism is serious here, even in the culinary field.

Globalization has brought McDonalds, Starbucks, American chains and a few Italian restaurants to the streets of Mumbai, but Indian food is eaten. Innovating here is certainly not easy and doing it by skipping the steps is a triple leap forward. But Mumbai is "the gateway to India”, Also gastronomically speaking and it is chef Prateek Sadhu he is trying, innovating his immense gastronomic heritage with a contemporary and international language, which speaks to that slice of foodies that travel the world by Michelin stars and avant-garde restaurants. His Masque restaurant headed straight for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and in 2020 he earned the Miele One to Watch Award intended for restaurants to "keep an eye on".

Looking forward to know the 50 best restaurants in the world

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list draws up the list of the 50 most influential restaurants in the world every year, those that mark the evolution of contemporary haute cuisine and that are making the history of catering. The Miele One to Watch award celebrates the emerging talent of those who are out of the top 50, but who have the potential to climb the rankings in the coming years, so this is just the beginning for Prateek, Aditi and their kids. . The award was announced pending the award ceremony on June 2 in Antwerp, Flanders, like a teaser, to create even more anticipation for what in the industry is equal to the night of the Oscars.

Prateek Shadu, a chef returning home

Born in Kashmir, Prateek left to work in the most famous kitchens in the world (The French Laundry, Le Bernardin, Alinea and at Noma) and returned home with a method and an idea in mind: to change Indian cuisine forever and bring his Country on the map of world gastronomy. Madness? After all, Renè Redzepi did it, transforming Copenhagen into the culinary capital of the world when nobody knew a recipe for what later became a destination for intercontinental gourmet travel. Sadhu of the Nordic lesson has taken on the concept of seasonality, terroir, raw materials and ethical approach, and has moved it to India. Very ambitious, more perhaps than Retzepi's own project. In Scandinavia, in fact, the culinary culture was almost non-existent, tabula rasa, and rebuilding from the foundations is paradoxically easier. Second, state support and the creation of a restaurant movement made the vision of a madman a shared project to be supported. In India the culinary culture is vast, rooted, alive, the wonderful ingredients and the panorama of chefs with whom to share the project has nothing to do with that of the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto.

Masque, the first tasting menu in the country

Masque has four years of life, founded in 2016 by the chef and the entrepreneur Aditi Dugar, in a post-industrial context which today is rich in premises, but which at the time was essentially abandoned to itself. Nothing folkloristic, the interior design is sophisticated, "western" and very different both from the slightly tamarra elegance of the Indians and from the classic old-fashioned taste. We drink wine (also Indian!) And cocktails inspired by Ayurveda, which is certainly not the practice here, and above all we eat meat, in a country where 30% are vegetarian. Tasting menu, 10 courses, the first of its kind. "Our mission has been to rediscover Indian ingredients, evoke a sense of place and promote sustainability," explains Prateek. «Masque adopts a modern and progressive approach to catering and is committed to redefining Indian cuisine. For us, it's not about going back to regional recipes and simply serving them up in a new way. It means rereading recipes and ingredients with a new purpose and through new processes, not to close, but to create intercultural bridges . A radical, subversive approach that rediscovers the history of Indian food as a product of migration, exchanges and influences, with the aim of building a new conscious identity, not turned towards the past but towards the 21st century.

The new Indian cuisine is here

Before the opening, Prateek and Aditi spent 18 months exploring the different regions of India to find small farmers, high-quality products from the country, but together they also developed the agricultural estate in the nearby city of Pune from which most of the of the ingredients used in the restaurant. The new Lab has just been inaugurated next to the restaurant, a space created to experiment with techniques, ingredients and dishes, in the wake of similar experiences born alongside the most innovative restaurants in the world: now India too has its own.

During a trip to a distant country you want to taste typical cuisine, traditional flavors, street food and get in touch with the most genuine things. Fine dining restaurants are often interpreted as the opposite, as a sophistication of the truth. But if Mumbai is India, the real one, which is no longer just that of elephants and temples, deities and traditions, Masque is Indian cuisine, which is no longer just that of street food and food eaten with your hands. You cannot say that you have been to India without having been to Mumbai, today you cannot say that you have eaten Indian cuisine without having been to Masque.

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