Sauerkraut and kimchi, anyone?
As waste crusader Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reveals the weird ingredients in his larder that go unused,
says celebrity cookbooks are to blame any women’s packets. Likewise, a wholefood wardrobes have broth mix that tasted like a guilty corner something even Oliver Twist reserved for would reject. “remorse purchases” Keeping them company – those items you are countless tins of buy in a flush of aspiration and selfdelusion, cannellini beans, bought saying to yourself: “If I get on the advice of clean-living these spike-heeled stilettos, I will be friends. “Man cannot leave on a glamorous disco-chick, rather than beans alone,” protested my husband, sensible White Stuff woman.” who firmly believes that unless
A crisis of confidence then ensues, something on his plate has died, “it’s as the shoes are mashing your not a meal”. metatarsals, and you return to your The sumac I bought for a dish default setting of skinny jeans and from the cookbook went “safe” top. down better, but I’m not sure why I
But now another form of remorse needed such a huge packet, short of purchase has come to light – and it’s opening an Iraqi-themed restaurant not our wardrobes but our kitchen in Wiltshire. Other culprits include shelves that are shamefully bulging Chinese dried mushrooms bought for with barely used items. a Rick Stein recipe (they smell like a
A survey by Sainsbury’s has found Kowloon undertakers) and Pimenton that shoppers are wasting hundreds of de la Vera (I don’t know what it is but I pounds a year by copying complicated think Rick’s to blame for that, too). recipes from celebrity chefs that No wonder a 2011 study by the involve long lists of expensive ingredients that they never use again. Even anti-waste crusader Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall revealed last week that he has a can of “carlin beans” in his cupboard – they’re like chickpeas, apparently, only four times the price and available at no supermarkets near you.
I plead guilty to being one such deluded cook. A quick scan of my kitchen cupboards reveals a throng of cans, packets and bottles that I have bought and used once, if ever. The money I’ve wasted could buy my family dinner at Claridges. All week.
The rationale behind these purchases varies. Some were made in the throes of a health kick, when I vowed to eat less meat and more vegetables and bought packets of lentils in every hue in order to make fibre-rich vegetable casseroles. Faced with a family mutiny – “if you’re cooking that, I’m ordering pizza” – they still sit sorrowfully in their
MUniversity of Manchester pinned the blame for some of the 18 million tonnes of edible food thrown out each year on pressure from celebrity chefs to cook dishes using expensive, recherché ingredients. And that was before Deliciously Ella and the Hemsley sisters came along and convinced us that if only we shelled out on exotic berries, seeds and nuts we, too, could become shinier, bouncier versions of ourselves, with ecstatically happy guts.
The trouble is many of these obscure foodstuffs often never get as far as our guts. Either they are too timeconsuming to make, or our families refuse to be conned by brownies containing beetroot. Annie Porter, motherof-three, pleads guilty to stockpiling cacao powder and dates for Deliciously Ella’s “energy balls” – “delicious” substitutes for chocolate-based snacks that look like camel droppings, which she make. One day. Other friends admit to ancient aduki beans (“bought on the advice of Gillian McKeith, never eaten”), matcha powder, agave syrup (“I’m embarrassed to have been sucked in; it’s super-expensive and no healthier than normal sugar), Japanese panko breadcrumbs, ras-el-hanout, Himalayan pink salt, lucuma powder, mung bean vermicelli, pomegranate molasses, goji berries (a universal “yuk” verdict), hemp protein, flaxseed, stevia, harissa paste, quinoa, and a mushroom powder recommended by Gwyneth on Goop.
No wonder so many people are ditching celebrity cookbooks in exasperation and turning to the internet for recipes that only need a handful of cheap, easy-to-find ingredients, rather than those they have to hunt down in obscure health food shops or buy in bulk online.
Of course, no one is forcing us to splash out on this stuff, but it would be nice if over-ambitious celebrity chefs and clean-eating queens could make their recipes a little more user-friendly: halving the ingredients list would be a start.
And as consumers, we’ve got to be more realistic about what we plan to cook. Buying expensive mushroom powder won’t necessarily give us the Gwyneth glow, and an apple a day is probably as good for your gut as a helping of buckwheat.
As one friend says: “I’d just been considering sauerkraut and kimchi, and then had a word with myself... as if I or any of my family would ever tuck into that!”