One of the topics I am passionate about is food wastage. In an ideal world we would show respect to our food and have none of it go in the bin.
Recently I was able to team up with Love Food Hate Waste (https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz) as part of Wellington on a Plate and hold a cooking demonstration on how to use up some of the most commonly usable but thrown away household food items.
According to the Love Food Hate Waste website: “New Zealanders throw away 122,547 tonnes of food a year. That is equivalent to 213 jumbo jets of food that has to go somewhere to rot, instead of being eaten. All of this food is worth about $872 million each year. That amount of food could feed the population of Dunedin for two years!” That’s only in New Zealand, globally “one third of food produced globally is wasted; that is 1.3 billion tonnes of food that is never eaten.” That to me is just mental and we can all do (and should) do our part by reducing our waste as much as possible. Shared here are some of the recipes that use some of LFHW’s top ten chucked out food items that you can try at home.
- 300g cooked chicken, shredded
- 200g pumpkin
- ¼ cabbage
- 1 carrot
- ½ onion
- 3 slices stale bread, diced
- 2 whole egg
- 500ml canola (or other neutral) oil
- 1 teaspon Dijon mustard
- Salt, pepper, sugar
- Juice of 3 citrus fruit ie grapefruit, lemon, limes, oranges
- 1tsp ground coriander
- 1tsp ground cumin
- 1/2tsp allspice
- Reserve 1Tbs of the juiced citrus and place the rest in a pot and simmer until reduced by ¾. Using a stick blender or in a blender or food processor blend the whole eggs with the mustard and reserved Tbs of citrus juice until it becomes pale in appearance. Drizzle in the canola oil slowly to emulsify. Once all the oil is incorporated and the mayo is nice and thick fold in the citrus reduction and then season with a little salt and pepper and sugar (if required) to taste. If the mayo is too thick you can thin down with 1Tbs of hot water.
- Dice the pumpkin, toss in a little oil and then toss with the spice mix. Season with salt and pepper. Roast on a baking tray at 180C until tender, about 15minutes. Cool. Cut the bread into cubes and toss in a little oil, season and bake in the oven until lightly browned and crispy. Chiffonade/shred the cabbage thinly, julienne/finely slice the onion (red or white onion ok) and grate the peeled carrot. Fold through enough of the citrus mayo so the slaw is nicely coated. Serve with the pumpkin, chicken and croutons.
