“I was born in India, where we’re not allowed to waste anything”
BBC Food has teamed up with Countryfile to launch Sustainable Summer, a season of new videos, recipes and articles, packed with ideas to help you shop, cook and eat sustainably. Ready Steady Cook chef Romy Gill MBE met Joe Crowley at the Community Farm in Somerset, to cook easy Indian dishes made from the farm’s summer veg. Romy grew up in West Bengal, where she wasn’t “allowed to waste anything”. Since moving to the UK in the ’90s, she has looked to her roots to find ways to keep her cooking sustainable and minimise how much she throws away. Here she shares her Countryfile recipes and some of her best sustainability tips. Romy Gill (right) picking courgettes with Countryfile presenter Joe Crowley (left). Have ideas ready for using up leftover veg “My parents were very good cooks and were really conscious about wasting [food]”, says Romy. Everything was bought fresh and cooked every day, so they “didn’t have a fridge-freezer until I was 11”. But she now makes the most of her freezer, grating ginger and garlic and freezing them in ice cube trays, and freezing easily perishable herbs like curry leaves. “We are not allowed to waste anything”, says Romy. Her mum used every part of the plant, including cauliflower leaves and stems, coriander stalks and beetroot leaves. Zero-waste cooking “is not something new for me”. She advises eating the veg peel, too. “Wash carrots properly and you don’t need to peel them.” When she lived in India, leftover vegetables were made into chutneys, pickles, pakoras and her mum’s speciality, fried-rice. Romy also makes vegetable tikki, and puts veg into parathas. If you’re short of time, most veg can be frozen until you’re ready to cook. Watch Romy make courgette pakoras with coriander chutney in the quick video below. Eat what’s in season “I had never seen a supermarket [before I moved to the UK]”, says Romy. “We depended on local shops and vendors, it was about eating what was in season and local”. Buying foods out of season can be expensive – and comes at an environmental cost if they’re grown in a fossil-fuel heated greenhouse or transported from overseas. They also may not taste as good. If you can grow your own veg, Romy recommends it. “My husband is very green fingered.” They built a kitchen garden in the back of her (now closed) restaurant Romy’s Kitchen in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire. The produce was used in the restaurant, and she started a cooking and gardening club for a local primary school, where children “could pick tomatoes or courgettes and we would cook them in the school”. It taught the children where food comes from, and gave them a taste of authentic Indian cuisine. Watch Romy make a simple vegetable sabzi using French beans in the quick video below. You can flex the recipe to use runner beans, sweet potatoes or other seasonal veg. Dress the dish up with pickles, yoghurt and naan for a feast. Eat plenty of veg “Indian food is very plant-based”, says Romy. “Meat [was] not often the focus of the meal” when she was growing up, and would be eaten once a month on special occasions. “You don’t have to be vegetarian or vegan to eat vegetables”, she says, adding that vegetable-based dishes are what many Indians eat at home. Watch Romy make paneer palak in our quick video below. Be willing to try new ingredients and dishes Eating seasonally can mean trying veg you’re not used to. When Romy moved to the UK, she sought out inexpensive ways to make authentic Indian food with a British influence. She couldn’t drive, so relied on local shops, where much of the produce – including broccoli and courgettes – was unfamilar. She added them to her favourite recipes, and invented new ones. Romy has a veg box delivered and enjoys the challenge of coming up with what to cook. “Always go back to your roots” when cooking with unfamilar ingredients, she says, adapting favourite dishes to include them, and “you will understand what will work”.