In 1999, Ruth Reichl, then the editor in chief of Gourmet, asked me if I would travel around Ethiopia, the country of my birth, with a writer for the magazine. I hadn’t been back since my Swedish parents adopted me when I was about 2 years old, and when the plane touched down there, I was overcome with emotion.
Everything was both unfamiliar and yet so comfortable. My first time walking through the open-air market in the capital, Addis Ababa, the sights and smells of spices, herbs and grains overwhelmed me. I picked up a handful of millet and wondered how toasting it might bring out its earthiness, or how slow-cooking it in a rich broth could make it creamy like risotto. This was the start of a decades-long obsession with the foods of my ancestors and my attempts to bring them into my home and onto my menus.
In the years since my trip, climate change has made it far more difficult to grow food in many parts of Africa (and beyond). Months of heavy rain and flooding have battered East African farmland, while blazing heat and drought in southern Africa have left farmers with little to harvest.
But a handful of African grains are well suited to difficult planting conditions. Millet, sorghum and teff are delicious, nutritious and quick to grow, even after natural disasters. Pearl millet, a staple throughout sub-Saharan Africa, can grow in both waterlogged and barren soil. Teff is an ancient grain used in injera bread that provides up to two-thirds of Ethiopia’s protein and dietary fiber. It can regrow even after extreme drought. Fonio, a grain from West Africa, is part of the millet family. It’s rich in iron, B vitamins and calcium. More than that, it sprouts quickly and can thrive in almost any type of soil with relatively little water.
As climate change threatens the availability of global staples like wheat, rice and potatoes, we must diversify what’s on the plate. And not just for our own consumption. Crops such as millet, teff and fonio can provide a lifeline for farming families struggling to make it from season to season. These are foods that need to be better known and more widely eaten. They could become future staples around the world, as widespread in the United States as cocoa or coffee. This change starts by seeing Africa as a source of opportunity.
More and more of us in the food industry are beginning to see the possibilities. My friend Garrett Oliver, the brew master at Brooklyn Brewery, partnered with the food company Yolélé to brew beer using fonio. Yolélé is working directly with smallholder fonio farmers in the Sahel region, just south of the Sahara, to connect them with local and global markets. It is investing in processing facilities to create more job opportunities, and bringing an African grain to a new audience in the United States.
Building a bigger market for African grains such as fonio is not without its challenges. Teff and millet have been around for a long time, but their producers have not had the resources or infrastructure to export or market heavily to the West.
Millions of people could soon be eating fonio if the food industry took a page from the playbook of another fantastically popular ancient grain: quinoa. This Andean staple, once barely known in the United States, is now in the salad bar in Whole Foods and on the menu at Sweetgreen.
What propelled it from obscurity to the mainstream? In 1984, the first quinoa exports began to arrive in the United States as word of its great flavor and high protein content spread among health-minded consumers. Natural-foods distributors like Eden Foods and Arrowhead Mills began to package and market it, making it easier to find just when health food stores were starting to go more mainstream. By 2008, Oprah Winfrey was including quinoa as part of her 21-day cleanse diet and by 2013, Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook “It’s All Good” celebrated the superfood. With growing interest in plant-based diets and nutrition, now is the time for celebrities and other influencers to teach home cooks and chefs about the joy of African super grains — and create consumer demand and a market for growers.
The more I cook with African ingredients at home in Harlem, the more integral they’ve become to my everyday diet. I love making oatmeal and risotto with millet for my two children. I also use teff flour as a gluten-free and high-fiber substitute for all-purpose wheat flour. One morning making breakfast with my son got me thinking about using teff to make his beloved pumpkin pancakes. He’s all about the maple syrup and fruit, but I started playing around with teff to make the pancakes more nutritious. Teff gives the batter a sweet nuttiness and cooking it makes the kitchen smell incredible. Now, these are his favorite pancakes.
Chefs also have a role to play in putting these climate-friendly foods on the map. Demystifying a lesser-known ingredient is something we do all the time. WhenI opened my restaurant Hav & Mar in Chelsea, I wanted to highlight the East African ingredients I’d been playing around with at home in an elevated but approachable way. I thought of those teff pancakes I make with my son, which led me to talk with our team about making a teff biscuit for our diners. It took us a lot of tries to get that biscuit just right. But today, our bread basket has fluffy teff biscuits and injera crisps. And over at our restaurant Metropolis, we make our version of the classic Ethiopian snack kolo with peanuts and toasted barley, dusted in spices and teff.
If Americans could incorporate more African ingredients into our pantries, we wouldn’t just be expanding our palates but also building a market for climate-friendly foods. Instead of viewing Africa as the victim of climate change, we can expand its potential as a source of climate solutions for the world.
The post I’m a Chef. This Grain Should Be the Next Quinoa. appeared first on New York Times.
