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As food lovers, we regularly go to great lengths to seek out something new, sometimes spending hours in pursuit of little-known flavors, exotic ingredients and one-of-a-kind dining experiences. And once in a while, a new food product comes along that totally steals our hearts. The latest find: A tiny operation called Brooklyn Delhi whose achaars we just can’t get enough of. Otherwise known as Indian pickles, achaars are something like a relish that accompany all kinds of food. They consist of chopped up vegetables or fruits mixed with oils and spices and can come in a variety of flavors and tastes, from sweet to sour to spicy. Achaars are used alongside rice, dal, curry or yogurt all over India, and the ones from Brooklyn Delhi are absolutely addictive.
While achaar is a common condiment throughout India, it isn’t always easy to find in the U.S. The achaars that are available tend to be very oily and they rarely use fresh ingredients. Enter Chitra Agrawal, founder and owner of Brooklyn Delhi, and her fiancé Ben Garthus. After bringing home some achaar from a trip to India, Agrawal introduced the stuff to her then-boyfriend, Garthus, who became instantly hooked. Agrawal and Garthus realized that achaar in the U.S. was not only difficult to find but lacking in comparison to the kind from India. So the pair decided to take matters into their own hands — literally.
Agrawal started making her own achaar with ingredients found locally in Brooklyn, and Garthus, a designer and sculptor, designed the packaging. Agrawal makes her achaar at St. John’s Bread and Life, a soup kitchen, food pantry and social services non-profit in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She works closely with Christy Robb, the organization’s food services director, making the relishes and employing some of the St. John’s workers to do so. It’s a win-win for both parties, and a great example of community synergy.
In addition to operating her own business and working with St. John’s Bread and Life, Agrawal also teaches Indian cooking classes, hosts supper club dinners and blogs at The ABCDs of Cooking. It was actually at one of her cooking classes years ago that Agrawal made her first batch of achaar. (She has been working on and perfecting a variety of flavors ever since.) And if that weren’t enough, her cookbook, South Indian Home Cooking Using Local Ingredients, is slated for release by Ten Speed Press in March of 2016.
When she launched Brooklyn Delhi in December 2013, Agrawal was committed to using local ingredients, like the ones in her newest flavor, Rhubarb Ginger, which she gets from New York-based Samascott Orchards and Wilcklow Orchards, and Pennsylvania-based Willow Wisp Organic Farm. Like all of the relishes, the Rhubarb Ginger flavor was developed according to what was available locally, and inspired by flavors Agrawal grew up eating. This particular achaar — a spicy one — was based on the mango pickles common in Southern India, where Agrawal’s mother is from. (Her dad is from Northern India, so she has both influences, combined with her American background.)
In addition to being small-batch, fresh and local, Brooklyn Delhi’s relishes are extremely versatile — the achaars goes just as well with quesadillas as they do dosas — bridging Indian cuisine with many others. Fort Greene-based market The Greene Grape serves a sandwich with the Rhubarb Ginger achaar mixed with mayonnaise, for example.
You can find us using the Roasted Garlic Achaar with grilled chicken and the Tomato Achaar on eggs, dal and couscous. Move over, Sriracha. It’s all about achaar.
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Once a niche business, locally grown foods aren’t just for farmers markets anymore.
A growing network of companies and organizations is delivering food directly from local farms to major institutions like Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in downtown Philadelphia, eliminating scores of middlemen from farm to fork. Along the way, they’re increasing profits and recognition for smaller farms and bringing consumers healthier, fresher foods.
Over the past five years, with more than $25 million in federal aid, these so-called food hubs have helped transform locally grown foods into a bigger business, supplying hospitals, schools, restaurant chains and grocery stores as consumer demand grows.
Major institutions like Jefferson have long relied on whatever giant food service companies provide, often processed foods that are delivered efficiently and are easy to heat and serve. But with a steady supply of locally grown food from the Common Market food hub, Jefferson now serves vegetables like bok choy and asparagus, creamy yogurts from Amish country and omelets with locally sourced cage-free eggs and spinach.
The model is simple: Common Market, a nonprofit, picks up food from 75 regional farmers and small food companies and quickly turns it around in its Philadelphia warehouse. The food — everything from vegetables to turkey to tofu — is then sent to 220 city customers along with detailed information about where it was grown or produced. There are about 300 other similar food hubs around the country.
Shelley Chamberlain of Jefferson’s dining services says the hospital hopes to eventually source 10 percent of its food from Common Market. The items can be a bit more expensive and take more labor and training to cook, but Chamberlain says it’s worth it to serve healthier foods.
“We can’t go out to farms and say, ‘I’d like to buy your cucumbers,’ ‘I’d like to buy your bok choy,’ ‘I’d like to buy your carrots,'” she says. “They provide an infrastructure for us to trust what is coming in the door.”
Dawn Buzby of A.T. Buzby Farm in Woodstown, New Jersey, says it’s a movement toward “farm to institution.” Three times a week, Common Market picks up tomatoes, sweet corn, eggplant, cantaloupes and other produce from her farm and sells the food in Philadelphia, 35 miles away.
She says Common Market is helping her business get urban name recognition. And her farm sets the price of sales, something that isn’t an option at the auction down the road.
“People are just becoming so interested in their food and where it comes from,” Buzby says. “I only see it getting better.”
It’s a cultural transformation for the agriculture industry — and the Agriculture Department — which has long been focused on the biggest farms and staple crops like corn and soybeans. Most fruits and vegetables are shut out of major subsidy programs as billions of federal dollars flow to large growers.
USDA has upped its commitment to building small farms and locally grown food with a program started in 2009 called “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” Boosting food hubs like Common Market has been one of its priorities. There isn’t good data yet on locally grown food sales, but USDA says it has touched almost 3,000 separate projects.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says it’s a part of a government effort to revitalize rural areas, which have been losing population — and important political clout.
“It’s all designed to reconnect people with the food that they consume so that there is a better appreciation, a greater appreciation, for the amazing story of American agriculture regardless of what production system you favor, or what sized operation you have,” he says.
Haile Johnston says he co-founded Common Market in 2008 after seeing how little farmers were making at wholesale and how much customers were paying for the same foods in the city.
“The two anchors of the chain, the producers and consumers, are really the most marginalized in this system,” he said.
Johnston says hospitals like Jefferson, along with schools, were a part of their model from the start because they could be a steady source of business and serve a large number of low-income people who may not have much access to produce.
In 2008, Common Market generated $125,000 in sales. This year, the organization is set to surpass $2.5 million — all money reinvested into the nonprofit. Last year, Common Market received a $300,000 USDA grant designed to improve access to healthier foods in low-income communities.
New York City’s Greenmarket Co. and Detroit’s Eastern Market are running similar models, both with help from USDA. Like Common Market’s, their customers are varied, from large institutions to grocery stores, restaurants and farmers markets in low-income areas.
USDA has helped these hubs and farmers that supply them with research dollars, technical support, microloans, infrastructure such as hoop houses for winter growth and help buying equipment. USDA also facilitates farm-to-school programs and has heavily invested in promoting farmers markets.
In Mississippi, Wal-Mart has started buying purple hull peas — similar to black-eyed peas — directly from farmers in the Mississippi Delta, a deal cemented with USDA help. One of the farmers, Charles Houston, says the checks from Wal-Mart have helped many of his area’s small farms survive, paying for new irrigation and infrastructure.
Ron McCormick, Wal-Mart’s senior director of sustainable agriculture, says many of the company’s distributors are getting into the local game. The company, the nation’s largest retailer, pledged to double its share of locally grown foods between 2009 and 2015.
Consumers are continuing to want more of it. Consumer and market research company Hartman Group found that nearly a third of consumers bought more local products than in the previous year.
Dan Carmody of Detroit’s Eastern Market says he compares local foods to the craft brew industry — once on the sidelines, it’s now making a dent in the country’s beer sales.
“You see the same thing happening in food,” he says. “It’s really changing the narrative.”
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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MCJalonick
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of acres of rich California farmland has gone unplanted this year because of drought, and researchers said Tuesday that next year could be even worse, with some farmers possibly losing their last source of water as wells run dry.
The University of California, Davis, Center for Watershed Sciences released a study finding that farmers struggling with drought left nearly 430,000 acres unplanted this year, costing the California economy $2.2 billion and 17,000 jobs.
Researchers say chances are high for yet another dry year in 2015, which would force farmers to rely even more heavily on groundwater for irrigation.
“It’s tougher than we thought,” Richard Howitt, a University of California, Davis professor emeritus of agriculture and resource economics.
The study used computer modeling, NASA satellite data and estimates provided by state and federal water agencies to examine the impact on California under continued dry conditions. The research was presented at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
California, which leads the nation in production of more than a dozen crops with a $44.7 billion agriculture industry, is now in its third dry year. The drought has hit the Central Valley the hardest.
The drought has not driven up food prices because crops such as corn and grain can be grown in other areas of the country, and farmers in California can use their more expensive water on specialty crops such as almonds that already fetch a high price from consumers, Howitt said.
To nourish those crops, farmers have been pumping more groundwater as the mountain snowpack sends less water to state reservoirs and canals. Howitt urged farmers to take the lead in managing their scarce groundwater.
The groundwater is not being replenished, and Howitt said continuing pumping will cause up to 10 percent of wells in the southern Central Valley to dry up.
“My message to farmers is treat groundwater like you treat your retirement account,” Howitt said in an interview. “Know how much water’s in it and how fast it’s being used.”
California is the only western state that doesn’t measure groundwater use, and Howitt said demanding more of wells is a short-term solution with long-term costs.
“It’s very simple economics, but it’s such an emotional topic,” said Howitt. “Farmers have to sit down and ask themselves… do they want their children and grandchildren to be farming?”
The California Department of Food and Agriculture requested the research.
Karen Ross, the department’s secretary, said she recognizes the critical state of California’s groundwater and the need for local officials to manage it. If that does not happen, Ross said the state will intervene.
Millions of Californians depend on ground supplies for drinking water, she said, adding that farmers have a large role to play.
“It’s not if there will be future droughts,” Ross said in an interview. “There will be future droughts, and we need to take our lessons and prepare ourselves as much as possible.”
Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, said he doesn’t anticipate a rainy El Niño next year to rescue California. As a result, the state needs to implement a variety of measures, such as conservation and managing groundwater and reservoirs, he said.
Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau, said losses attributed to the drought could have been avoided if state leaders had added more reservoirs rather than focusing on conservation for decades.
He also said the Farm Bureau has long supported groundwater management at a local level.
“Statewide regulation certainly won’t fix our groundwater needs, just as it has failed to provide solutions to surface water needs,” he said.
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