Several years ago, Tristram Stuart’s food waste campaign (now called
Feedback) asked me to create a pop-up banquet using surplus food. They wanted me
to cater for no fewer than 200 covers. I was shocked that Feedback thought it
possible to feed so many people on surplus ingredients, but was up for the
challenge.
I needn’t have worried. In the lead-up, I was inundated with edible donations
of remarkable quality: organic vegetables (end-of-life produce donated by a
national box scheme), kilos of gherkins (made from a glut of cucumbers saved at
an allotment), and fish by-catch (fish caught outside of a fisherman’s quota,
which they are usually forced, by law, to throw back into the sea to die). I was
astonished to learn that such high-grade food was being wasted.
In time, this revelation led to the launch of my seasonal tapas restaurant,
Poco, in Bristol. I am obsessive about never wasting food, and at Poco we employ
steadfast green policies, recycling and composting more than 95% of our
waste.
Supermarkets are terrible culprits. As a skint art student, I remember
looking through supermarket bins in the hope of a free meal, where the likes of
tuna sandwiches with expired best-before dates and perfectly good apples (save
for the unidentifiable bin juice coating them) languished sadly, spoilt by
supermarkets keen to restock their shelves with newer, glossier-looking
goods.
I find it deeply upsetting that supermarkets believe they have a right to
lock away and destroy food that is perfectly fit for human consumption,
especially when food poverty is such an extensive local and global issue.
Through food waste campaigns such as Feeding the 5000, an international event
that feeds 5,000 people using food that would otherwise be wasted, and Food
Cycle’s community cafes, large-scale food retailers have been forced to address
their food waste issues more publicly. Working directly with both large and
small food producers to save their surplus was enlightening and helped me to
realise how we can all have a dramatic effect on the food system through where
we shop and how we value our food.
Before cooking banquets with “rubbish”, I worked with Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall at River Cottage in Dorset, where I was taught to care
about the quality and provenance of ingredients above all else. Hugh would scold
us every time a non-seasonal vegetable entered the kitchen and, with meat, we
had to be able to recite, like Rain Man, the exact breed, farm and age of the
animal. I gained a strong understanding of butchery and the patience to cook
seasonally.
Some mornings I’d arrive at work to be confronted by the medieval scene of a
whole deer hanging by tendon hooks in a freezing barn. I’d spend the morning
butchering and organising it into cuts for the week’s menus, and none of it was
wasted. I use relatively little meat in my cooking now, but that training in
nose-to-tail cooking at River Cottage has changed the way I cook
irreversibly.
The nose-to-tail philosophy refers to eating the whole animal – complete
consumption: nose, tail and absolutely everything in between. In my own cooking,
I’ve extended this to encompass all food, celebrating the whole ingredient – a
practice I have come to describe as “root-to-fruit”. This saves both food and
money, and in turn, enables you to buy better quality, higher welfare
ingredients. My leftover lemon rind tart is a classic example of where I put
this ethos to use at Poco; another being my beetroot “hummus”, served with
beet-top crisps. The often-discarded leaves and stalks of a beetroot are full of
nutrients and flavour, and make a brilliant accompaniment to the dip. This
vibrant purple dip sits beautifully alongside my cavolo nero pesto, which
utilises the tough stalks of the vegetable (also often thrown away) and, for
extra texture, can be fortified with bread that’s going stale. Together, they
are magically moreish.
Beetroot ‘hummus’ with beet-top crisps
If you can’t find beets with the tops on, make the crisps using kale or
chard.
For the hummus
350-400g of whole beetroots, washed
¼ lemon, juiced
4
tbsp thick live yoghurt
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove,
crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
Salt and black pepper, to
taste
For the crisps
1 bunch (about 500g) beetroot leaves, ruby chard, or
kale
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt, to taste
1 Put the beetroots into a small saucepan and cover with plenty of water.
Bring to the boil and reduce the heat. Simmer for 50 minutes, then drain and
leave until cool. Rub off the skin and remove the rough tops. Put the tops aside
for the crisps.
2 Quarter the cooked beetroots and put them in a blender. Add the lemon
juice, yoghurt, olive oil, garlic and cumin seeds. Blend to a smooth puree and
season to taste. Allow to cool.
3 Meanwhile, make the beetroot crisps with the tops you cut off. Preheat the
oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Drizzle the beetroot leaves with honey and oil,
then sprinkle with salt. Massage the dressing into each leaf.
4 Spread the leaves out on baking trays and put into the oven for 15 minutes.
5 Separate the leaves and remove any that are already crispy. Return the rest to
the oven for another 5 minutes. Check, and repeat if necessary.
6 Serve the cooled hummus dressed with olive oil, the beetroot crisps for
dipping and seasonal crudites. Store the hummus in the fridge.
Tom Hunt
washing cavolo nero in a warehouse.
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‘Cooking
from root-to-fruit saves food, money and enables you to buy better ingredients’
… Tom Hunt. Photograph: Elena Heatherwick/Guardian
Cavolo nero and walnut
dip
Makes 500g
250g cavolo nero (or green kale)
120ml extra virgin olive
oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 small garlic clove, peeled
2 tbsp thick live
yoghurt
50g strong hard goat’s cheese, diced
50g walnuts
20g stale
bread, torn into pieces (optional)
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1 Place the blanched leaves and stalks in a blender with the rest of the
ingredients, except the walnuts.
2 Blend to a rough puree, stir in the crushed walnuts and season with salt
and pepper to taste. Serve.
