Root to shoot

In much the same way Fergus Henderson championed ‘nose-to-tail’ cooking that used the whole animal, a growing army of chefs are now looking at ‘root-to-shoot’ dishes that utilise every part of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Chef Tom Hunt, whose debut cookery book, The Natural Cook: Eating the Seasons from Root to Fruit, came out in 2014, releases his follow up this March, Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet, which will focus on shopping and cooking sustainably, while eating healthier, bettertasting food at no extra cost (to your wallet or the environment). The chef, who co-founded low-waste restaurant, Poco, also recently announced that it will only serve high-welfare, zero-carbon meat (such as offal, waste cuts, culled wild animals including squirrel, crayfish and muntjac deer). Down the road in Bristol, chef Mark Chapman has adopted a similar philosophy at Masa + Mezcal, where the plant-based menu is packed with dishes made from the likes of vegetable skins, leaves and tips that might normally go in the bin. These include potato peelings (blanched and deep-fried to make crisps on the fish dishes or tostada fillings), coriander (the leaves are chopped and used in crudo dishes and sauces, the stalks are used alongside the leaves to make dressings) and hibiscus (they hydrate dried petals to make a dressing and dry the rehydrated hibiscus leaves which are fried into crisps for a cabbage salad). At Haar in St Andrews, Dean Banks runs a zero-waste kitchen where examples of ‘root to shoot’ range from oils made from the tops of spring onions to cabbage trimmings used to make kimchi.