WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

YOU may have noticed that the onions and garlic you buy or have in the storeroom are starting to develop green sprouts.

Once the sprouting and seeding process starts it won’t stop, so you need to deal with them now, otherwise they’ll go to waste. Transforming onions and garlic into meal foundations before they go to waste is very satisfying and will save you lots of time and energy when it comes to making dinner. Big batches of caramelised onions and slowcooked onions make a great springboard for sauces and soups. They keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge or can be frozen in small tubs.

Now is also a good time to make the very useful starter flavour base known in Italy as sofrito and in France as mirepoix. I tend to work to a ratio of two parts onion and leek to one part carrot and celery. (If you don’t like the sweetness of carrot you can leave it out for an allgreen version).

Cook the vegetables with a big knob of butter or a glug of olive oil until they are very soft and broken down without colouring or browning. The more vegetables you are cooking, the longer this will take. At the end you can add a tub of tomato paste and cook it out for another five minutes. The dark brown mixture that forms is the start point of many a great slowbake and stew — simply brown the meat, add about a cup of the mixture, wine, stock, a can of tomatoes, herbs and spices and aromatics of your choice and leave it to cook long and slow until the meat is meltingly tender.

Garlic can be put to good use before it sprouts by roasting it in a bath of olive oil. Separate garlic heads into individual cloves, trim off the ends and place the cloves in a small roasting dish. Pour over enough olive oil to cover the garlic and bake at 150degC for 4045 minutes or until garlic is very soft. When it’s cool, lift off and discard the skins. It keeps for weeks in the fridge and both the garlic and oil can be used for dressings,

sauces, risotto and wherever you might want garlic in a dish. The flavour will be softer and rounder than raw garlic but all the better for it.

Here are some of my favourite ways to make the most of these useful harvests before they

bolt.