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With ferns, fish and roots, Ecuador brings its rainforest to restaurant tables

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Ferns that taste like asparagus when sautéed in olive oil and salt. Leaves with the flavour of garlic. A black, spicy sauce derived from bitter manioc root to go with paiche, a giant Amazonian fish. If the special tasting menu at a restaurant in Ecuador’s capital Quito reads like a walk through the Amazonian rainforest, that is exactly the point. See the beauty, the smell, the colours of the Amazon through the incredible flavours that you can taste!” said Marta Echavarria, co-founder of Quito-based Canopy Bridge.


The non-profit network connects indigenous farmers with buyers and provided many of the ingredients on the menu at Quito’s Patria restaurant.


“Instead of telling you all the horrible things and how we’re losing forests, we want to send a different message. We really want people to taste conservation, taste biodiversity, in a very emotional way,” Echavarria said in a phone interview.


Ecuadorian chef Mauricio Acuña, who created the menu with Kamilla Seidler, crowned Latin America’s Best Female Chef in 2016, is a supporter of the “rainforest to table” movement showcasing Amazon flavours in the region’s top restaurants.


By capitalising on growing consumer demand for healthy, local and novel food, the network of chefs, food companies and conservationists hopes to protect the forests, boost the income of indigenous farmers and encourage food diversity.


It is being promoted by Canopy Bridge, renowned Lima-based restaurant Amaz and US-based environmental groups Wildlife Conservation Society and Forest Trends.


For Acuña, trained in Spain and France, it is also about national identity in a country where culinary traditions have been overshadowed by better-known neighbours Peru and Brazil.


“In Ecuador, chefs don’t use local ingredients... And it’s like (I have to) fight with clients on why I use them,” he told Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Quito.


“If we lose these ingredients, we lose our culture, our identity,” said Acuña, who runs several restaurants, a gastronomy research centre and an annual culinary festival.


BIODIVERSITY UNDER THREAT


Ecuador may be smaller than the state of Nevada but it is one of the world’s most biodiverse nations, boasting the Amazon rainforest, Andean mountains and the Galapagos Islands.


It is home to 18 per cent of the world’s bird species and orchids, 10 per cent of the world’s amphibians, and 8 per cent of the world’s mammals, according to studies.


This biodiversity is under threat from oil exploration, agriculture, mining and poverty, environmentalists say.


In September 2016, Ecuador’s state-oil company Petroamazonas began drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park despite opposition from environmentalists, saying it would ensure minimum environmental impact.


The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, soaks up vast amounts of carbon and is seen as vital to the fight against climate change.


While deforestation rates in the Amazon have declined over the last decade, the felling of trees continues at an alarming rate, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has said.


One way to lessen the pressure on forests and natural resources is to improve farmers’ incomes, said John Preissing, country representative in Ecuador for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).


In Ecuador, two out of 10 people are considered poor in cities, but in rural areas, the number jumps to six out of 10 and food insecurity is higher, Preissing said.


The FAO is working with cocoa farmers in the northern province of Napo to help them make higher-value products such as chocolate and help them preserve tropical forests, he added.


Canopy Bridge works with two indigenous groups — the Ai-Kofan and the Kichwa — and have been delivering weekly fresh produce to around 15 restaurants for the past year.


About 750 people are benefiting from the project, with the monthly communal income of around $400 going towards paying for expenses such as electricity for community radio stations and school uniforms for the children, Echavarria said. — Thomson Reuters Foundation


Thin Lei Win


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