Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
Gino declares war on waste
Gino D’acampo explains why he is on a mission to stop home cooks from wasting so much food
After over 30 years in the UK, there’s something Gino D’acampo can’t get used to: the food waste.
“We are used to going to the supermarket and going to places to buy our food – to touch it, to smell it,” the TV chef says of his hometown in Naples, Italy.
“In the last 30 years that I’ve been in England, I’ve always been thinking: why do people buy everything in a plastic bag? Why do they buy so much stuff they don’t need?”
For Gino – who is a regular face on This Morning and fronts Gordon, Gino And Fred: Road Trip alongside Gordon Ramsay and Fred Sirieix – it’s “crazy” to buy your fruit and vegetables wrapped up in plastic.
“It’s crazy to think that anyone would go and buy a bag of peppers, without touching them, without smelling them – and without even thinking what they’re going to do with these backup peppers. The majority of people need one or two peppers, but they go into the supermarket, they go into the corner shop and they pick up a bag. They use three and then they throw away six.
“I’m thinking: do you really know what you’re doing here? Do you know how much money you’re wasting?”
For Gino, the issue isn’t just food or financial waste – but home cooks could benefit from paying more attention to the fruit and veg they buy.
“That’s another thing people don’t understand – I always tell them 50% of the job when you cook is about buying, it’s not about cooking. If you buy the right ingredients, you’re 50% there, and the food is going to taste much better.”
Gino’s strong opinions around food waste stem from his upbringing. “I didn’t have a family with money, I was brought up on a farm,” he says.
“For me, it’s normal… In my house growing up, there was no throwing stuff in the bin. There was no buying things unless you really needed them. So in my mind, it’s always like: OK, what do I need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen? I want my family, my children, everybody to understand the amount of food the we are wasting.”
So what can you do to minimise waste? Buying loose fruit and veg is a start, so you only have what you need.
Gino adds: “The best thing that anyone who is in the kitchen [can do] is to learn recipes that you can use leftovers [in].
“This week we had lunch, a lot of roasted vegetables,
roasted chicken… Usually, what do you do with the leftovers? You’re going to throw them in the bin.
“Or, you’re going to come up with something that you can use them with. There are so many recipes, like risotto or a frittata. That’s what I did, I got the old roast potato, vegetables, everything else, [and I thought] I’m going to make a lovely frittata. Because the flavours are already in the vegetables – it’s only the technique of putting the eggs
together and there’ll be Parmesan cheese on top, then the job was done.”
If you think you’re too busy to go to the supermarket or greengrocer to pick out individual veg, Gino has an answer for that too.
“Yes, yes, yes – but you do have the time to go on social media. You do have the time to watch a series on Netflix and stuff like that. You do have the time for drinking in the pub – but yet you don’t have the time to feed yourself properly.”