Waste not, want not

Food writer and supper club host Sophie Gordon on why and how to use the whole vegetable when we cook

It might be pretty normal in your household to throw away potato peelings, cauliflower leaves and apple cores, but there’s a new movement encouraging us to use all those bits up to help curb the growing global food waste problem. After all, they are perfectly edible – even delicious, given the right treatment.

Plant-based chef and supper club host Sophie Gordon admits she’s received “a couple of looks” on the train when eating an entire apple, down to the thin stick. “I was just thinking how funny it was, because I know it’s not the nicest part of the apple, but it’s still fine.”

Nearly a third of all food produced globally goes to waste; it’s a staggering statistic, and as we all try to be more conscious of our ecological footprint, chucking extra food into a dish instead of the bin seems simple and doable.

Sophie, 29, is part of a growing number of people in the food world proving whole vegetable cookery is possible (and tasty) – similar to the movement using the entire animal.

‘The book is a collection of seasonal recipes celebrating veg in its entirety’

And while many people are getting on board with ordering cod’s cheeks and offal in restaurants or cooking with dairy cow meat, we might turn our noses up at the hairy end of a spring onion.

Her debut cookbook, the Whole Vegetable: Sustainable Recipes For A Healthier Planet, is a collection of seasonal recipes celebrating veg in its entirety, tips for wasting less and using up leftovers, or using fruit and veg in ways you may not have thought of before (like cabbage ramen, chive and chickpea sandwiches, or maple and thyme roasted pears).

It was her chef dad who first instilled the notion of minimal food waste in her.

“I’d often have half a pepper or a little bit of cauliflower left, so I always wanted to find new ways to use them, and not waste it,” says Brightonbased Sophie.

“With cauliflower or broccoli, people chop off a big portion of the stalk and then chuck it away, but you can just chop that up and add it to whatever you’re doing.”

We’re really missing a trick when it comes to lettuce, too. “People just chuck their lettuce away if it’s looking a bit limp, but you can just chuck it in and cook it as if it was spinach,” she says. Added nutrients, less waste – win-win.

And why are we so adamant potatoes need to be peeled? Sophie, who has been vegan for a decade, says she tends not to peel them and “often you just need to give it a really good scrub”.

If you must have your mash silky smooth or your roasties bare, you can still make tasty use of the peelings.

“Peel them off and chop them really small, then fry them in oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and then they’re kind of like croutons or crisps,” she adds.

The cookbook is littered with lots more helpful non-waste tips like this.

“More planning, more writing a list of what you’ve got [to get] before going to the shops,” she says.

“When you say it out loud, people say, ‘Oh that’s really simple’. But they are so simple – and that’s why we should do them.”

Sophie Gordon’s curried pumpkin dal