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.
Hamin Eggs with Cumin Salt Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Middle Eastern cooking class inspired by Michael Rantissi! 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 […]
Lebanese Pink Pickled Turnips Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Lebanese cooking class! Pickled vegetables are always on a Lebanese table. Olives, chillies and turnips are most common, and small stuffed eggplants (makdous), cucumbers and cauliflower are also popular. The most distinctive are the pink pickled turnips, traditionally stained bright pink with beetroot. These […]
Shallot Pancakes Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Asian home cooking class inspired by Cheong Liew! Shallot pancakes are northern Chinese snacks that are irresistibly moreish and a great way to use up the green onion tops that so often end up in the bin. The method is a simple process of rolling the […]
Crema Catalana Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! One of my favourite Sardinian sweets is bianchini, moreish little meringues studded with toasted almonds and lemon zest. Making them (or any meringue) means leftover egg yolks and a perfect excuse to make crema Catalana. This classic Spanish dessert […]
Vietnamese Red Rice Cake Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Vietnamese cooking class inspired by Mark Jensen! Every rice-centred cuisine has a version of fried rice to use up leftover cooked rice. In Vietnam it’s tomato rice, cơm đỏ, which is best made with cooked rice that’s been refrigerated overnight. I sometimes take Vietnamese […]
Coppa di Mascarpone Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! This simple dessert was a fixture on Italian restaurant menus in the ‘70s and ‘80s but seems to have fallen from favour now, replaced I suspect by the more complex tiramisu. While tiramisu is an excellent dessert (see […]
Coconut Jelly Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Malaysian cooking class! This light, fluffy, slightly sweet coconut jelly, often seen on yum cha trolleys, is also a popular finish to a spicy meal in Malaysia where it’s known as agar-agar kelapa. When I don’t have time to make my own coconut milk, I use […]
Bruschetta Caprese Join my food & wine tour to Southern Italy to discover more Italian regional specialties! It’s good to eat with the seasons, but occasionally I want a touch of summer year-round – that’s when I call on a few of my favourite things and create this delicious bruschetta Caprese. Windy Hills Farm pots […]
Pasta Frittata Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Italian cooking class featuring the food of Southern Italy! This is the best way I’ve found to use up leftover pasta that has a relatively dry sauce, such as tagliatelle Bolognese, orecchiette with broccoli and spaghetti aglio e olio. The photo here was made with leftover […]
Mushroom Bruschetta Join my food & wine tour to Italy to discover more seasonal Italian specialties! One of the things I loved most about Lucio’s Paddington restaurant was the seasonal bruschetta that always arrived with our aperitivi, a tradition I like to continue at home. In autumn, the crisp air of Italy’s hilly regions is […]
