Dinner in Brooklyn: From Trash To Table
Last Thursday I attended a dinner where every ingredient used to create the meal had been earmarked for the landfill. What am I talking about? Moldy grapes, floppy herbs, limp carrots, overripe peaches and eggplant scraps.
I wrote about the dinner for the Wall Street Journal, and you can read that here. One item that we weren't quite able to get up on their website in time were the tips the host, Josh Treuhaft, and his chef, Celia Lam, shared with me on ways to minimize your food waste.
Pickles made from broccoli stalk, watermelon rind, tiny okra and beans.
How to minimize waste, and make your food last longer:
- Throw produce scraps in a re-sealable bag in the freezer for use in future stocks.
- Cut off mold from fruit or vegetables and use what's left in soups or stocks.
- Throw overripe fruit into a smoothie.
- Roast limp vegetables. (Limp carrots still taste like carrots.)
- Stow soft vegetables in water and put them in your refrigerator to crisp up.
- Preserve herbs that have gone soft in oil. Use it as a finishing oil on soups and salads. (Herbs that are blackened are not good to use anymore, those should be composted.)
- Slice overripe fruit and place in freezer for use in a sorbet, salad or future smoothie.
- Make a hummus-like dip out of older vegetables that you've roasted.
- Make pickles out of older produce, which will preserve them.
- Make jam or jelly out of overripe produce.
Host of Salvage Supperclub Josh Treuhaft, and his chef, Celia Lam.