A third of all food produced for human consumption around the world is wasted. If you love to cook you’re in a great position to do your small part to reduce food waste, one meal at a time. Bones and vegetable offcuts become stock, stale bread is blitzed into fresh breadcrumbs and coriander roots are cleaned up to pound into curry pastes – all of which freeze well. So before you go shopping, or bin food off-cuts, think about what delicious dishes you can make from what you have on hand. Here are my favourite no waste recipes.
Mushroom & Cheese Pies Thanks to chef Simon Sandall who rattled off this suggestion on the spur of the moment when we were making beef Wellington together and wondering what to do with leftover mushroom duxelles and pastry off-cuts. You could always make the duxelles specifically for these pies and whip up a larger batch […]
Beetroot Leaf Boorani Fresh crisp beetroot leaves make a great addition to a salad or a Persian herb platter (sabzi khordan), but they tend not to be valued in Australia. They’re generally chopped off the beets and thrown out, so they’re usually not in great condition; but it’s surprising what a good soak in a […]
Skordalia Greece’s famous garlicky white dip is sometimes made with bread as the thickening agent, sometimes with ground almond and sometimes potato. I love chef Janni Kyritsis’ version using both bread and almond as it gives a lovely rich flavour. Any leftover will keep in the fridge for 3–4 days and is delicious slathered over […]
SouthernHam Salad The South is famous for smoked ham. It’s fried for breakfast, sliced for sandwiches and popular in this party favourite. It’s called a salad, but is really more of a dip or spread, perfect for serving alongside its retro cousins, pimento cheese spread and devilled eggs, for an impressive start to a big […]
Crisp Potato Skins This recipe is inspired by one in a 1980s Gourmet Traveller magazine and I make it with potato skins leftover from preparing gnocchi. Roasting the potatoes on a bed of rock salt then passing them through a ricer ensures the driest potato and therefore the lightest gnocchi. It also leaves you with […]
Bacon from Heaven There seem to be as many recipes for this cake as there are cooks; my simple version is inspired by the one Edite Vieira gives in her wonderful book The Taste of Portugal. She says that it originated in the Middle Ages in a convent (as so many Portuguese desserts did) and […]
I hate wasting pastry offcuts, so when I make a tart or pie I use the remaining pastry for these tasty little shortcrust cookies. Unlike puff pastry, shortcrust can be rerolled without ill effect, so all of it can be used. If you’re using Carême pastry and store the offcuts in the fridge for more […]
Vegetable Stock A good vegetable stock can be the base of great soups, risotto, casseroles and many other dishes. Roasting the vegetables before boiling them adds further flavour and depth. Stock freezes really well too, so you can always have some on hand. Once you see how simple it is, you’ll never buy stock again. […]
Chicken Stock A good chicken stock is the base for great soups, risotto, casseroles and many other dishes. Even seafood and red meat dishes often use chicken stock for its subtle flavour that adds depth without competing with the star Ingredients. Roasting the chicken bones before boiling them, to make what is called a brown […]
I first tasted this dish in the mid ‘90s at Middle Eastern restaurant Fez in Darlinghurst, and it became my go-to breakfast dish. Years later I discovered that it’s the long slow cooking that gives hamin eggs their creamy texture and brown onion skins that add the beautiful colour. In Israel these eggs are called […]
