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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had lunch with Rameshwar, a vegetable vendor whose video recently went viral where he was talking about his struggles with inflation. Gandhi shared a picture with Rameshwar and praised his strength under adverse circumstances. In the viral video, Rameshwar was seen with his empty hand-cart, saying that he could not buy tomatoes as the prices were very high.

If you haven’t noticed, we love quinoa at our house. The health benefits of quinoa are many, so I’m always looking for new fresh ways to use it (and it’s always so delicious). 

This refreshing and healthy vegetable and quinoa salad recipe with avocado and orange salad dressing is so easy to prepare. Make the quinoa (which is naturally gluten-free and packed with protein, zinc, fiber, folate and antioxidants) and prep your other ingredients while it cooks.

Here is what you need to make the salad: quinoa, fresh tomatoes, carrot, sweet pepper, green onion, parsley, mint, raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds. For the salad dressing you need an avocado, orange juice, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Serve this healthy quinoa
grain salad with your favorite protein for a complete meal!

Note: 30Seconds is a participant in the Amazon affiliate advertising program and this post contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission or fees if you make a purchase via those links.

Cuisine: American
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Servings: 8

Ingredients 

Salad

Dressing

Recipe Notes

Here’s how to make it: 

Nutrition Facts Per Serving

Cholesterol: 0mg

Dietary Fiber: 3.2g

Potassium: 330mg

Recipe cooking times, nutritional information and servings are approximate and provided for your convenience. However, 30Seconds is not responsible for the outcome of any recipe, nor may you have the same results because of variations in ingredients, temperatures, altitude, errors, omissions or cooking/baking abilities. This recipe has been analyzed by VeryWellFit. However, any nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and it is up to the individual to ascertain accuracy. To ensure image quality, we may occasionally use stock photography.

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Cutting Boards

$8 & Up

Junior Minister for Agriculture Dr Karl Dawson has stated that the BVI will be able to reduce the importation of certain vegetables in a few years, as local production is poised to increase.

Minister Dawson said his prediction is based on certain projects that are underway in the BVI and some that are planned to increase production of certain foods.

“Based on the projects that are underway and the projects that are planned, I can see a reduction in imports. Certainly, when it comes to greens like lettuce, cabbage, broccoli and so on, there’s going to be a reduction because people are interested and moving forward with farming those things,” the Minister stated at a recent press conference.

Food importation remains a problem in the Caribbean and one of the main areas in which the region’s countries spend foreign dollars.

CARICOM countries have committed to reducing the region’s large food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025. To achieve this target, the countries say they will give special attention to priority crops and products such as poultry, corn, soya, meat (Goat, Sheep, Beef), rice and niche vegetables, which are highly imported products in the region.

During the press conference, one journalist asked Minister Dawson how close the BVI is to achieving the goal set by CARICOM. In response, the Minister said he’s unable to provide the answer as the BVI’s agricultural system lacks adequate data.

“Sadly, I cannot give an answer because data is one of the weaknesses as far as the territory is concerned. That’s one of the things we really want in the Department because if we have goals that we are aspiring to, we must know where we are and we must know when we’ve arrived to where we are seeking to go,” the Minister stated.

Copyright 2023 BVI News, Media Expressions Limited. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed.

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use of the comments below or other interaction among the users.

Look here Cowboy … your grasp on the most basic of things in life seem to have deserted you and to be honest, there is not one thing you have said to date that makes any sense whatsoever!

Your understanding of agriculture and conservation is terrifying. You allow the sales of lobster and conch by a few during the closed season by either giving permission of just looking the other way! How’s that work? Certainly not conservation, or preservation of a species in desperate need of a rebound! Long term this is devastating for the two industries (tourism and fisheries) which demonstrates your willful ignorance and indifference.

Second, regarding your vegetables. The importation of vegetables will not cease until (a) the product you produce is sufficient enough and of good enough quality to match that which you import, and (b) the price it is sold for is close to or equally as competitive as those that are currently imported.

Your endless talk and attempts to let us know you actually have an inkling of what you are talking about is making you look a bigger fool than you already are.

Further example of our Country putting people in positions of authority and leadership that have ZERO knowledge of what they are talking about or what they are doing! All to our detriment.

From the Victory Gardens of World War II to the back-to-the-land-movement of the ‘60s to the present day, a home vegetable garden has symbolized healthful and sustainable living. Gardening is good exercise shown to be correlated to long life. Home-grown produce is often fresher and more flavorful than what’s available at the store. And growing vegetables at home can be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying them. Home gardeners can also help preserve the genetic diversity of our food crops.

Despite these potential benefits of vegetable gardening, if you aren’t careful, you can end up using a lot of water and dumping a lot of chemicals to grow expensive vegetables. In that case, you might be better off leaving the growing to the farmers.

Commercial agriculture is the biggest use of ground and surface water in the United States. It accounts for approximately 80% of the nation’s water consumption overall, and more than 90% in many western states. But the image of a homeowner standing outside in the late afternoon, aiming a hose at the vegetable garden is a clue to how wasteful homegrown vegetables can be.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 30% to 60% of total household water is used outside. Our lawns and gardens soak up precious freshwater.

A garden hose can emit up to 24 gallons of water per minute, delivering water much more quickly than the soil can absorb. As much as 50% of water distributed by sprinklers is wasted due to wind, evaporation, and runoff caused by inefficient watering. A poorly maintained automatic irrigation system can waste up to 25,000 gallons of water annually.

Tip: Limit your watering to drip irrigation of your garden; don’t turn on the sprinkler and walk away.

Farmers have an economic incentive not to waste fertilizer. But the runoff from farms is still so high in nitrates that nearby well water is often unsafe to drink. Home gardeners are equally susceptible to the “more is more” mentality and are even less likely to carefully measure fertilizer applications.

Not only does overfertilization harm garden plants, the nutrients from commercial fertilizers are quickly leached from garden soil. Once fertilizer leaves your vegetable garden beds, it has the same environmental impacts as farm fertilizers — namely, contaminating water, feeding algal blooms, and even contributing to climate change.

Tip: Limit use of fertilizer, insecticides, and even natural soil augmentation to reduce run-off of those materials into nearby groundwater.

Pesticide use is a huge problem with multiple harmful impacts. Each year, agriculture in the U.S. uses about 900 million pounds of 17,000 pesticide products.

By contrast, the 59 million pounds of pesticide used in home gardens seem inconsequential. But on a per-acre basis, home gardeners use more pesticides than farmers do — by some estimates up to 10 times more. This overuse can lead to pesticides escaping the garden into the environment. This pesticide drift endangers local ecosystems and human health.

Home gardeners tend to underestimate the toxicity of the products they use. They do not always follow safety protocols, which creates health risks from exposure during application, and unsafe storage creates a risk of poisoning, especially for pets and children.

Green Vegetable Gardening

All of this doesn’t mean that the produce from your garden can’t be greener than what you buy at the store — it just isn’t automatically so. Home gardeners can be water-wise. They have the luxury of choosing crops and varieties that are drought tolerant or have water needs that match their local climate. They can also use gardening techniques like self-watering and drip irrigation that are not always a viable choice for commercial operations. WaterSense labeled sprinklers and irrigation systems can save nearly 7,600 gallons of water a year.

Organic does not necessarily mean nontoxic, but organic growing methods are generally more sustainable. Organic fertilizers often improve soil tilth in addition to nutrition, and because they are absorbed slowly, need to be applied less frequently. Nitrogen-fixing cover crops and compost mulch (or even peecycling) can reduce or eliminate the need for any commercial fertilizers. Avoiding synthetic pesticides in favor of natural pest control methods and homemade pest repellents will keep your garden safer, too.

Even Greener

Thinking about your vegetable garden’s use of and effects on water and soil is a great start. To make your garden even greener, learn to compost. Make sure the seeds you buy are organic, or save and trade your seeds. Learn about companion planting and other practices that attract pollinators like bees. Grow extra to donate to food banks. Homegrown veggies are not always the greenest choice, but with a little effort, they can be.

Originally published on August 11, 2020, this article was updated in July 2023.

Tendril, 5 Princes Street, London W1B 2LQ. Lunch discovery menu £35, dinner £45, à la carte £5.50-£19, wines from £33

In the heart of red-meat Mayfair, there’s a hotbed of vegetable-love. To the right, in a small parade, there’s Neat Burger, knocking out pea protein and corn-based patties, dyed what they think are the right colours by the addition of beetroot and turmeric. To the left is the Dutch-born Avocado Show. Granted, there are outbreaks of animal along the way, but the menu is mostly vegetable-led, that vegetable being the worryingly thirsty avocado. They will even make you a burger in which the bun has been substituted for two halves of an avocado. On the one hand I should try it before passing comment. On the other, don’t make me.

But the most interesting of these three restaurants on Princes Street, tucked in together for comfort, is in the middle. Meat-free cookery has reached a maturity where the classy thing to do is write about vegan menus without explicitly noting that no animals were involved in the making of your dinner. Then again Tendril, the restaurant of chef Rishim Sachdeva who has worked at Chiltern Firehouse and the Fat Duck, makes the point explicitly with the subtitle: A (Mostly) Vegan Kitchen & Bar. If he acknowledges it, I should, too.

Tendril started as a pop-up, first in a Soho pub, then later here, on this narrow site just south of Oxford Street. Sachdeva launched a crowdfunder to raise the £150,000 he needed to put down permanent roots at this address. I’m glad everyone chipped in. It allows me the opportunity to be the latest to rave about both his thoroughly good taste and his sublime technique; about his ability to use strident Asian and Middle Eastern flavours to get the most from prime vegetables, much as an already well-dressed dandy accessorises with a cravat and fedora. The deep-fat fryer helps, too.

In this, his cooking resembles that of the equally brilliant Helen Graham at Bubala, just perhaps in more formal tailoring. Although the website lists an à la carte, this evening we are offered only the £45 “Discovery” menu, which is edgy restaurant speak for “You’ll have what you’re bloody given.” This is usually my cue for a good old pout. I love restaurants because they let me make choices. Bring me a list, let me express my sordid desires. If I wanted what I was given, I’d stay at home, where at least I’d get to enjoy being ridiculed by my kids. But the word-spaghetti of the menu descriptions – “aubergine, kalamatas, tahini” reads one; “grilled beetroot, spring onion, smoked soy” reads another – is so alluring, so well lubricated with promise, that I give myself to it happily.

The first and last savoury courses are a partwork. That aubergine dish, the vegetable roasted to a thrillingly dark, slumped and smoky mess, comes dressed in the saltiness of olive and the smooth velvet plush of tahini. It’s baba ganoush that’s declined to be further pummelled, because the point has already been made. Alongside is a bowl of a white bean purée, the thickness of Dulux emulsion, honking of garlic and stained red with chilli oil. Use a slab of the crunch-crusted sourdough from Coombeshead Farm to dredge. Or pile it on the confit potato, which comes with a crisp fennel remoulade. Only a small bowl of salted cucumber, playing the part of Japanese pickles, feels like an afterthought. Apparently, it’s dressed with a gherkin ketchup. It lacks the colour offered by acidity.

Next, we have a choice. There’s a vegan plate of dark, chewy oyster mushrooms alongside a crisp-shelled croquette boasting an almost liquid centre tasting intensely of the company it’s keeping. Or there’s a vegetarian cylinder of crunchy, barely cooked courgette, hollowed out and filled with a rice pilaf seasoned with the saltiness of feta, the latter the cause for saying the restaurant is only “mostly” vegan. It comes sprinkled with puffed black rice and rests on a bed of a sultry harissa sauce. We try both and accept the offer of an additional £6 course of leek fritters. It’s a crisp, deep-fried orb of oniony joy, with a pungent curry-leaf sauce that tastes like a good spice cupboard smells.

Onwards to the second partwork, our main course, even though everything has so far floated past us in an unstructured march that plays against such old-school hierarchies. It’s focused on beetroot two ways: in square blocks, arranged like books on a shelf, hiding under miraculously thin slices that still have bite. The sweetness of the beetroot is spanked away by the smoked soy sauce. I don’t know how you smoke soy sauce. I do know we all should. It adds the deepest of caramel tones to the salty hit. An accompanying bowl of lemongrass rice is a little porridge-like. Make up for it with the freshness of pak choi leaves so baby they’re practically foetal, under a shower of sesame seeds. Corn “ribs” come charred with the saline hit of seaweed.

There’s an awful lot going on here. It’s restless but focused and jolly. Looking at the à la carte, I see our menu included all the good sounding stuff, save for the “Chinatown; purple potatoes”, which others have eulogised. It’s an awful lot for £45 a head in this corner of London. The bill will, however, be pumped up by the wines which, being vegan, come from small producers with bigger overheads. There’s very little below £40. I have a £48 bottle of riesling from Emil Bauer & Söhne called Sex Drugs & Rock’n’roll, because I am essentially a child. I did not throw a television in anyone’s swimming pool. I did like the crisp citrussy notes.

The menu finishes with “dessert of the day”, but perhaps that part of the kitchen was having a bad one. We’re told it’s a poached pear and almond frangipane tart. We are served a clumsy square of something so small it’s hard to know where pear ends and frangipane begins. It comes with an oat milk custard that does at least prove you can make custard with oat milk and without eggs. No matter. The narrow, downlit room is full tonight, and there is the buzz you get when people have found their way to something distinctive, clever and objectively good. Just go elsewhere afterwards for an ice-cream. Vegan, natch.

News bites

West African restaurant Akoko, in London’s Fitzrovia, is to get a sibling. Restaurateur Aji Akokomi will open the 40-cover Akara on a site in Borough Market next month. It’s named after the West African black-eye bean fritters, which will be a feature of the menu, filled with prawns, scallops, ox cheek or mushrooms, alongside barbecue dishes and a variety of pancakes.

What do you do if you own a couple of restaurant brands that are performing poorly and proving a drag on the rest of your business? If you’re the Restaurant Group, which owns the successful Wagamama brand, you pay a rival company to take them off your hands. TRG has just paid £7.5m to Big Table Group to take over the 75 Frankie & Benny’s and Chiquito sites, which equates to £100,000 per restaurant. Big Table already owns the Las Iguanas, Bella Italia and Banana Tree brands.

The venerable Italian restaurant Enoteca Turi in London’s Chelsea, long regarded as one of the best in the capital, is under new management. Founders Giuseppe and Pam Turi are retiring after 30 years. The restaurant has been bought by industry veteran Dominic Ford, who over the years was involved with L’Escargot and the original brasserie on the fifth floor of Harvey Nichols. Additional investment has come from David Gleave of Liberty Wines. The deal gives them the brand, the leasehold on the property and, of course, one of the great Italian wine collections (enotecaturi.com).

Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.

A teenage farmer in Maine faced a summer of hardship — flooding rains, lack of sunshine, invasive animals and even a disheartening break in — but remains steadfast in his focus on business and community as pumpkin harvest season begins.

“It takes hard work,” Brayden Nadeau, 13, of Poland, Maine, told Fox News Digital. 

“There’s going to be some good days and bad days, and good years and bad years. But if you care about the land and it’s your dream, you can do it.”

The teen, who attends Bruce Whittier Middle School, owns and operates Brayden’s Vegetable Stand on Hatch Road in Auburn, Maine, about 10 miles down the road from where he lives with his family.

When he was just 10, he noticed an overabundance in his grandparents’ garden — and hatched an idea.

Teenager Brayden Nadeau built his own vegetable stand and is sharing his homegrown produce with his community. He’s shown here on the right; his grandfather, Dan Herrick, stand with him on the left.  (Marie Herrick)

“I’ve always liked to garden and the vegetables had been piling up on the counter,” he said. 

“So I decided to open a vegetable stand and I’ve just kept it going from there on out. I’ve been doing it for three years now.”

The 12-by-14 foot vegetable stand that the teen said is in a “decently busy” spot is a fixture in the community — even the mayor is a customer.

Jason Levesque, the mayor of Auburn, is proud of the work that Brayden Nadeau, 13, has put in on a vegetable stand. (City of Auburn)

“The kid has heart,” Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque told Fox News Digital. 

“He’s got a work ethic. He’s exactly the person we want, regardless of age, to come to Auburn and build a home, and start a farm. Whether it’s your primary income or your secondary income, it’s a critical part of community building. Nothing says community more in Maine, and especially in Auburn, than a farm stand.”

A special project shared with his grandparents, Dan and Marie Herrick of Auburn, Brayden spends hours each day working the 12-acre garden.

“We grow quite a bit of cucumbers and tomatoes,” he said. 

Brayden Nadeau of Maine sells an assortment of produce including corn, carrots, Brussels sprouts and summer squash. (Marie Herrick)

“We do zucchini, summer squash, corn, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, garlic and, right now, lots of pumpkins.”

The teenager said he planted 6,000 tomato plants this year — and he and his grandfather are planning to double the acreage of the garden by next year.

“My favorite thing to grow is zucchini because it grows so fast and it’s one of the first things that we harvest,” he said. 

“But my favorite thing to pick is pumpkins because when you’re picking them and you get to the end, it’s like you have a big volume of them.”

“He’s got a work ethic. He’s exactly the person we want, regardless of age, to come to Auburn and build a home, and start a farm.”

The teen has been working on the farm with his grandfather since he was just two years old.

“He forces me to be tired sometimes because he pushes me, but that is the best part,” the teen’s grandfather, Dan Herrick, told Fox News Digital. 

“He’s on topic. He knows what he’s doing. I’m proud of him. He doesn’t slack off and he just goes every day.”

The Herrick family also raises pigs, turkeys, chickens and a few cows. 

Brayden Nadeau’s 12-by-14 foot stand is located in a pretty busy part of the city and gets a nice amount of traffic, the family said. (Marie Herrick)

The teenager has some laying hens, as well, and he sells the eggs at his stand. 

His grandmother confirmed the teen’s unusual work ethic.

“We might be a little partial because we’re his grandparents, but I can honestly say he is the hardest working child I have ever come across,” Marie Herrick told Fox News Digital. 

She went on, “He’s in bed very early, but he’s up very early — before sunrise. There are some days when he is up at 4 a.m. Most of the time it’s 5-5:30. Right now he’s in school, so Grampie opens the stand for him.”

Brayden Nadeau was inspired to build his vegetable stand after seeing the abundance of produce that his grandparents grew while they were gardening. (Marie Herrick)

But this summer, as most kids his age slept in and played video games, the teen experienced some of the real challenges that come with being a farmer. 

While some parts of the country faced drought, farmers in Maine dealt with flooding rains.

“The entire state has experienced some — not just one-in-100-year rains, but one-in-1,000-year rains,” Mayor Levesque said. 

“We had four-and-a half inches of rainfall in 45 minutes earlier this summer,” he went on. “It flooded our downtown. It’s saturated the ground. I think we’ve had the rainiest or one of the rainiest seasons or summers on record.”

“We might be a little partial because we’re his grandparents, but I can honestly say he is the hardest working child I have ever come across,” Marie Herrick, Brayden Nadeau’s grandmother (left), told Fox News Digital. (Marie Herrick)

Marie Herrick said it seems like it rained every day this summer. 

“I think we’ve only had one stretch of weather that was maybe eight days of sun,” she said. 

“And put this into perspective: We had three days without rain in June — three days without rain in June.”

No sun means the bees aren’t moving, pollination stops and vegetables get flooded, she said.

“It’s everywhere in this state right now,” Dan Herrick said. 

“Helping out the community by feeding people is just one of my passions. So I still say follow your dream.”

“It’s something that we have to endure because it’s part of farming,” he also said. 

“But then there’s the nuisance of wildlife that came in … The deer have chewed stuff so bad this year, you can’t believe it. Without the sun and warmth, the berries and acorns didn’t come into play in the woods and everybody’s got to eat.” 

A robbery plus community support

But perhaps more disappointing to the family than Mother Nature’s wrath was a break-in by a fellow citizen. 

At around 3:30 p.m. on June 16, someone broke into the vegetable stand — and helped himself or herself to product and profit.

“It was right after I left to go home,” the teen said. 

When Brayden Nadeau’s vegetable stand was broken into, his community rallied to support him.  (Marie Herrick)

“My grandfather was gone somewhere,” he added. “So it was a very short window, like 35-40 minutes. Someone decided to come inside and break open the cash box. They took some vegetables, and they also stole meat out of our freezer.”

The teen said there are no security cameras on the property — so they do not know who was responsible. 

When no one is working the stand, there’s a lockbox with a money slit in it, said the teen. Customers pay by using the honor system because “there’s a lot of good people” in town, he said.

“It made me feel very upset to think of all the hard work that I put in and then for someone to come and do that,” he said. 

Members of the United Bikers of Maine showed up in support of Brayden’s Vegetable Stand when they got wind of the break-in and theft. (Marie Herrick)

“It was very disappointing. If someone was hungry, I would’ve given it to them,” he added. “But I don’t think it was someone hungry [if they’d] break into the money and steal a majority of stuff.”

Nadeau closed down the stand for a day to regroup.

He reopened the following Sunday to record sales — word of the theft made it around the area via social media.

“There’s a lot more good people than bad people in the world.”

“The support was crazy,” said the teenager. “We had people coming from all over the state of Maine. They were very apologetic and they really felt bad, and so they wanted to come and support me.”

A group of bikers — the United Bikers of Maine — rolled up on their motorcycles to show their support.

“It was quite impressive to see, like, 40 bikes, most of them with two people on the bike, come up here in overwhelming support for Brayden,” said the grandparents about their grandson. “It made you cry. One of their presidents just [took] Brayden under his wing and said, ‘Any time you need anything, you contact us because we’ll be there for you.’ It was amazing.”

The teen said the show of support restored his faith in people.

The teenager has been hard at work focusing on the pumpkin harvest that will soon take place now that fall is here. (Marie Herrick)

“There’s a lot more good people than bad people in the world,” he said. “Helping out the community by feeding people is just one of my passions. So I still say follow your dream.”

This young man’s dream is to keep farming vegetables and getting more beef cows. 

But for now, he’s got a crop of pumpkins to harvest and sell — about 150-200 of them, he said.

“And that’s just the carving pumpkins,” he said. 

“We’ll have a lot of pie pumpkins, which are smaller for cooking — and squash and stuff like that.”

Gretchen Eichenberg is a contributing reporter for Fox News Digital.

Sancocho may be ubiquitous across Latin America, but no two recipes are the same. That’s because the primary ingredients of this hearty soup – meat, vegetables and tubers – are as broad and as varied as Latin America itself.

Perhaps that’s why the name of the dish is so generic; sancocho is derived from the Spanish verb sancochar, meaning to cook in liquid. Nevertheless, when you look at the different countries where the dish is made, you’ll find sancocho recipes vary based on regional ingredients, seasoned to comfort local palates.

In Puerto Rico, sancocho is a tomato-based beef stock with corn, potatoes, cassava, calabaza squash and beef. In the Dominican Republic, one recipe calls for “seven meats”, including goat, ham and pork sausage. In Panama, where it is considered the national dish, sancocho is a nostalgic panacea of poultry and produce.

Before modern shipping methods, ingredients varied by regions within Panama – thus, each sancocho recipe was unique. Nonetheless, the base recipe, which is arguably considered the “national” one, is the original that hails from Chitre, a town on the Azuero Peninsula, according to Panamanian culinary anthropologist and chef Charlie Collins. At his restaurant T’ACH, in the western highland town of Boquete, the esteemed chef – who many consider the “Godfather of the new Panamanian kitchen” – includes corn and local root vegetables from the surrounding areas in the province of Chiriquí, where most of Panama’s crops are grown.

“[Sancocho is made with] young hens (gallina) cut up into parts, onions, garlic, culantro [sawtooth coriander], oregano, salt and pepper to taste,” he said. “Also, malanga (taro root), ñame (Caribbean yam) and criollo chilli pepper – which adds flavour, but is not hot.”

Collins’ recipe for sancocho de gallina is one of many in his influential cookbook, T’ACH: Authentic Panama Cuisine, published in 2016. The word T’ach, borrowed from an Indigenous word for food (and also the namesake of his restaurant at his family’s generations-old Hotel Panamonte) is the result of his years-long exploration of Panama’s multicultural and indigenous culinary traditions.

After working in kitchens overseas in his early adult career, Collins returned to his native Panama and studied in places where food was still prepared in traditional ways: Indigenous tribal villages, Afro-Caribbean communities and households still holding onto their gastronomic culture since before the Panama Canal bridged the East and West in 1914. He compiled his research into his collaborative and comprehensive cookbook, which ultimately spearheaded a movement among his peers of contemporary chefs to not only rescue but elevate lost recipes of Panamanian cuisine at the modern dining table.

That said, sancocho has been such a part of Panamanian culture that it was not on the endangered recipe list. Today, most Panamanians have fond memories of eating sancocho for as far back as they can remember, each bite sparking nostalgia.

Veteran chef and cookbook author Cuquita Arias recalled her childhood. “I remember vividly when my family served sancocho at our house in El Valle to all farmers that, at midday, came down to mass from the mountains after working all day in the fields on March 19, Saint Joseph Day.”

Family traditions centred around sancocho continue today. “It is not unusual to see families spend the day by a river and prepare sancocho from scratch, over a wood fire,” Collins said, referring to the traditional Panamanian family picnic known as a matanza. “Three stones are placed to form a triangle where the big pot or paila sits, and the sancocho is cooked on an open fire pit.”

It’s the smouldering of wood that adds a smoky flavour to the soup, and it’s the fat of chicken skin that can make the stock thick and hearty. Further embellishments include the sides; sancocho may be enjoyed with patacones (fried plantains) or white rice with guandú (pigeon peas). Whichever way a rendition is served, it should be done in good company.

“We always ate [sancocho] for lunch at a family gathering, and we served the broth and ingredients individually as my family tradition did, including hot sauce and fresh lime,” reminisced Arias.

However, the dish isn’t just the centre of attention at a family occasion, but also the following morning. “Clients have sancocho the following day after a big party, be it a wedding or any celebration,” Collins noted from his catering experience. “It’s Panama’s most sought-out dish to recover from partying the night before.”

“It is easy to make, with popular ingredients,” Arias commented on its simplicity. “And it’s very filling.”

“I consider it one of my favourite soups,” Collins said.

A nutritionist is encouraging people not to discount the humble onion as studies show Australians are not eating enough vegetables. 

Key points:

Felicity Morrell is a nutritionist in South Australia’s Riverland and said many people knew of the onion’s flavour-boosting ability but did not know about its other benefits. 

“Onions contain a substance call fructans, which our bodies don’t digest very well, but the bacteria in our large intestine do,” she said. 

“One of the biggest benefits of onions is for our gut health, because they’re essentially providing food for our gut bacteria, which is really nourishing our gut microbiome.” 

Ms Morrell said for some people, onions could cause stomach discomfort due to the fructan, but she hoped people would not discount the vegetable. 

“A lot of people avoid onions … but it’s really important that they don’t because onion is such a beneficial food for our gut health,” she said.

“It’s really about finding the amount that each individual person can tolerate rather than excluding it completely.

“We want to be including it in our diet most days where possible for those gut health reasons [and] they’re such an affordable option to really boost up your vegetables in recipes.” 

Onion growth across industry

John Tselekidis is the sales and marketing head at Mitolo Family Farms, which has onion and potato farms spanning South Australia.

He said while the company had been growing onions for about 35 years, it had seen a significant growth in the last four to five years. 

“We’ve had significant growth in the onion side of the business [and we’re] growing well over 2,000 acres [810 hectares] of onions across three different sites,” Mr Tselekidis said. 

“This year with favourable growing conditions, most growers have had relatively good yields and quality, which has put a few more onions on the market, and has driven the price of browns down a bit, but reds have maintained a relatively stable price.”

Zerella Fresh general manager Renee Pye said her family, which also grew potatoes and carrots, was hoping to expand its onion storage operations soon. 

“Generally every year we struggle to find a place to put all the onions that need to be stored and aired out over the storage period, so that’s what’s prompted us to put an application forward to build a new shed for that,” she said. 

Ms Pye said demand for onions jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic due to an increase in people cooking from home. 

“People were at home dining, not getting out and about, they were looking up more recipes, cooking more at home and utilising more produce at home,” she said. 

An affordable option

Jordan Brooke-Barnett is the chief executive of AUSVEG SA, which recently merged on a national scale with Onions Australia, the peak industry body for onion growers. 

Mr Brooke-Barnett said onions presented good value for consumers, with other fresh produce hit by inflation. 

“We’ve had a lot of supply into the market over winter and they’re holding relatively stable at $2 a kilo, which is good value for the consumer,” he said. 

“While a commodity like onions is held relatively firm, there are other staples that have crept up over the past few months.” 

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