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WFP Chef's Table - World In A Pickle?
Popy Barua pickling at Cox's Bazar
The basket has been updated
Preserving is an age-old skill that cuts across cultures, highlighting the value of food and an awareness of food waste. Globally, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to about 1.3 billion tons per year. If we could reverse current food waste trends, we could save enough food to feed 2 billion people.
With World in A Pickle?, Chef’s Table highlights the value of food, the effort that goes into producing it and the unconscionable nature of food waste. We were joined by the WFP from Bangladesh, to explore their local projects helping women farmers and to understand the importance of pickling in Bangladeshi culture.
Popy Barua is a participant in the UN World Food Programme’s Livelihoods programme in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The programme aims to help vulnerable women gain marketable skills, financial literacy and start their own businesses so they can ensure their and their family’s food security. Through the programme, Popy started a farming business nearly two years ago. She sells her surplus produce at the WFP Farmers’ Market, which enables Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh to access fresh foods from local farmers and traders. Popy has since become the main breadwinner for her family.
Anahita Dhondy is an Indian chef who received her training at India’s Hotel Management Aurangabad and Le Cordon Bleu. Anahita is a well-known champion of her traditional Parsi food culture, the rich cuisine of India’s Zoroastrian community. Additionally, Anahita works to promote lost recipes and ingredients, such as the traditional grain millet, in her cooking.
On this theme, Dhondy was involved in Tasting India’s Eat Like Your Grandma campaign – a chef-led campaign that aims to popularize and reintroduce ‘forgotten foods’ into India’s diet. At age 23, Anahita became the chef manager of SodaBottleOpenerWala, a restaurant that cooks authentic Parsi dishes.
Anahita aims to be a youth icon and inspiration for aspiring female chefs in India and around the world. Although young, Anahita has received the ‘Young Chef’ and Times Food Awards.
Arthur Potts Dawson is a chef and World Food Programme Advocate. Described by Jamie Oliver as ‘the original green chef’, much of his work centres around sustainability in the food system, the future of food and how we achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.
Arthur is the executive chef and sustainability expert at Omved Gardens, a unique event space and food hub in North London associated with Choithrams International Foundation, a private sector donor to WFP. The Chef’s Table is part of a series of events supported by Omved Gardens.
Richard Ragan is the current WFP Country Director for Bangladesh, overseeing the Rohingya response as well as country operations. Before that he served as the WFP Representative to Tanzania, Nepal, North Korea, Zambia, and worked on emergencies in East Timor, Kosovo and China. In North Korea he ran one of the largest WFP operations in WFPs history, feeding 6.6 million people, almost a third of the country’s population. He was the last American to ever officially live in North Korea and his family was the only American family to have ever lived there. As an avid surfer he has spent his life chasing waves which landed him in Liberia in 2014 where he was Head of Operations for UNMEER where he managed the UNs response at the height of the Ebola crisis. These days Richard is the WFP Representative to Bangladesh, overseeing development and emergency programming for the Bangladesh and Rohingya communities.
Brook duBois works in the Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh office of the UN World Food Programme. She has been a Communications Officer with WFP for over 5 years, working in Brussels, Kenya and now Bangladesh. Brook helps WFP raise awareness of the Rohingya refugee crisis and promote programmes that interlink humanitarian aid with longer-term development of host communities. You can follow her on Twitter (@brookdubois) to see more.
*If you have fresh coriander you can add it at the end.
*If you want to store it for longer you can add more oil in the beginning or at the end during storage
*This would last at least a week in the fridge.
*Store in a clean glass / plastic container and keep in the fridge.
Serve with anything you like. Anahita has hers with simple dal and rice.
The video recording of this workshop can be viewed below:
The UN World Food Programme is funded entirely by contributions from governments, companies and private individuals. To find out more, go to our website: wfp.org or to donate go to https://www.wfp.org/donate-now
We would love to see your pickles and chutneys. Please share photos on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #StopTheWaste and tagging @WFP_UK on Twitter and @worldfoodprogramme and @omvedgardens on Instagram.
