Saturday, October 4, 2008
Saving Scraps
If you are cutting your vegetables in a very formal, French manner, there is a prescribed, unvarying system. Your cutting station contains three bowls: the first bowl contains the whole, unmanipulated plant matter; the last bowl contains the finished, geometrically cut product; the middle bowl contains everything you have scraped, cut and peeled away in the process. Savvy cooks know that there is a lot of useful stuff that gets thrown in that middle bowl (and usually subsequently into the trash.) Turning those scraps into useful and delicious food is a really easy and rewarding way to stretch your food budget. It certainly gives me the feeling that I have performed some feat of wizardry- making something delightful from nothing. So this is the beginning of what will be an evolving list of useful scraps to save, accompanied with recipes and tips about how best to use them.
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4 comments:
Ren-
Interesting that this months issue of "Food & Wine" has an article entitled "A Thrifty Cook's Guide to (Almost) Free Ingredients". One recipe uses potato peels (I ALWAYS toss these, what a shame!) to make something akin to a potato chip. Others use the often discarded tops of leeks, orange peels (candied!), mushroom stems, parmesan cheese rinds, etc. I think this business of a finding a use for what we usually toss is very timely and honorable, indeed!
Food and Wine must be stealing peeks at my notebook! (kidding) I have a few forthcoming posts that talk about some of those ingredients. Definitely keep me posted with any ideas!
Composting is a good alternative to the trash when you aren't going to otherwise use the scraps -- in fact, my compost bin has thus far been the most successful part of my gardening experience!
I agree, compost is really the ideal use for extra organic matter. Even if you are the most efficient user of food scraps, there will be plant and animal matter that is left over and can be put to good use. Now I just need a place with a yard!
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