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PremiumFlavour splash: Crisp and colourful sunflower, beetroot and mustard micro greens are becoming important visual tools for chefs. Photo: Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint
The flavours burst in your mouth in all their freshness," says Nimish Bhatia. The regional executive chef-south, The Lalit Ashok Bangalore is not talking about a new cuisine or a must-try restaurant but an exciting ingredient that has been on a slow burn in the city for two years, making its presence felt more strongly in recent times.
Not more than 1-2 inches long, micro greens are the first stem and leaves that emerge from a germinating seed, and are increasingly a must-have for many chefs. They sprout from a variety of seeds, from peppery arugula and sharp radish-y daikon greens to pea shoots that taste like (what else) raw peas.
“I heard about them a year and a half ago, at a time when people wanted everything that’s healthy, and these tiny sprigs somehow added a sense of freshness even to heavy meat dishes," says Bhatia. Vivanta by Taj, Caperberry and ITC Gardenia are some Bangalore hot spots that now use micro greens.
The delicate micro green is packed not just with extra strong taste but is believed to be nutritionally advanced since it is a plant-in-waiting.
It’s a good tool to use for a chef, says Abhijit Saha, executive chef at Caperberry. Saha’s tryst with micro greens happened by chance. Struggling to find suppliers for watercress at Italia at The Park, Bangalore, almost a decade ago, he began to grow mustard cress instead. Bangalore, then unaware, got its first taste of crisp and peppery mustard micro greens.
For Saha the excitement lies in the aesthetic appeal of micro-greens—purple amaranth or a deep red beetroot leaf ups the visual va-va-voom of a salad.
His sourcing problem was sorted only recently.
In Hyderabad, Nithin Kodavur has been in the business of growing sprouts since 2007 but started with micro greens in 2010 when Saha asked for a regular supply. “It was not our forte, but when he explained his requirement, we decided to give it a shot," says Kodavur, who then spent several months researching micro greens and the best way to grow them. His first produce: mustard micro greens.
The supply challenge is easy to understand. Micro greens are nurtured in greenhouse trays and in a soil-less medium on a moist surface. They are extremely fussy and delicate—and can develop fungus easily. “When we first started, we took about eight months just to figure out how to control the humidity," says Kodavur.
Another reason every restaurant doesn’t yet have micro greens on its menu is simple—they cost between ₹ 400 for a 25g box of mustard greens and ₹ 5,000 for a kilogram of broccoli.
Some like the ITC Gardenia get around the problem by growing their micro greens in-house. The hotel’s “zero-mile" sprouts, offered as part of several dishes on its breakfast menu, come from its garden. Its Japanese restaurant Edo uses akame, the young leaves of shiso flowers, over its sushi and sashimi, while daikon greens find a mention in most of the restaurant’s salads.
Mumbai-based executive chef Allan Limmer, who works with The Lalit Mumbai, says micro greens will soon be commonplace, even on butter chicken. Limmer first worked with the micro versions of parsley, thyme, fennel and several other herbs in his first job at a London restaurant in 1992.
“It will catch on, provided people have access in good quality and quantity," says Saha, attributing the trend’s growth in the city to the well-travelled Bangalorean who is always on the lookout for new flavours and ideas on every restaurant visit.
Most chefs say India is still a decade away from finding micro greens on supermarket shelves, but, who knows, from a small green a mighty movement may grow.
pavitra.j@livemint.com
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