The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cooking with crumbs
Waste less with these sweet and savory ideas,
In the opening of the “Crumbs” chapter of “Bread Toast Crumbs” (Clarkson Potter, $30), author Alexandra Stafford describes the transformative moment when she first fried eggs over a few tablespoons of fresh bread crumbs saturated in olive oil. “It’s hard now today to look at a listless, crumbling slice of bread and not consider its future: crisped up and showered over pasta, soaked in milk and mixed into meatballs, saturated in oil and spread across a gratin,” she writes.
She acknowledges she’s tapping into what good (and thrifty) cooks have known for years: Bread too stale to be eaten fresh and the crumbs and small bits at the bottom of the cracker box are culinary gold. Those crumbs, whether savory or sweet, can add richness, flavor and texture to whatever you’re making. They’re far too valuable to end up in the trash.
I asked Lisa Rochon how she felt about crumbs. Rochon is a native of New Orleans, transplanted to Atlanta about 20 years ago. A culinary consultant and instructor, she has a wide range of experience owning and operating restaurants and catering firms in New Orleans, New York City and Atlanta. She can be found every other Saturday morning at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market with her line of household and entertaining items.
Teaching is a passion for Rochon and recently she was demonstrating her recipe for a muscadine and sweet pepper salad at the Peachtree Road market (look for the recipe in the In Season column next summer).
After the class, when I asked about crumbs, her eyes lit up. “I love crumbs! Savory ones like bread, cracker, potato and corn chip crumbs. Sweet crumbs like cookie and cake crumbs! There’s never a need to throw out stale cookies or broken potato chips.”
Turns out food waste is on the minds of more than just chefs. Overhearing our conversation, market shopper David Aferiat volunteered that he loves vegetable peel “crumbs.” He dehydrates the peels of root vegetables like beets, turnips and carrots and then turns them into crumbs with a mortar and pestle and uses them to sprinkle on salads and flavor risottos.
Later, Rochon and I sat down to talk crumbs. “My favorite way to use crumbs is in breading. Mix bread crumbs and potato chips and put them in the food processor with nuts like pecans or almonds. That’s a perfect coating for redfish, swordfish, any hearty fish. If you make the crumbs fine enough, you can use them to bread shrimp and make delicious oven-fried shrimp with them.”
She reminded me that corn and potato chips are gluten-free so they work well when you’re cooking with folks who are eating paleo or gluten-free. Think vegetarian burgers with those crumbs as a binder or crisp coating.
“I love a mix of crumbs for savory cheesecakes. Think how delicious it would be to have a corn chip crust with a chicken-black bean-corn cheesecake. Or a cheesecake with chicken and roasted peppers. Or something with Moroccan or Mediterranean flavors.”
The ideas just came tumbling out. Crumbs added to a traditional spinach dip to thicken the mix. Cookie crumbs combined with almond flour to make the crust for individual servings of pudding or chocolate mousse. Cookie crumbs to decorate a gorgeous layer cake that would give any piped buttercream-decorated cake a run for its money. White cake layers flavored with almond and lemon zest, then covered with lemon-flavored buttercream and a coating of gingersnap crumbs.
When Rochon gets to the bottom of a bag of cookies or crackers, she dumps the crumbs into jars, separatng by flavor. “If I don’t think I’ll use them right away, I’ll put them in the freezer or refrigerator. Otherwise, they can sit on the counter. For bread crumbs or anything with a little moisture in it, you should go ahead and freeze them. Then they’re ready when you need them, no thawing required.”
Again, mining crumbs for culinary gold is nothing new. Almost 40 years ago, Jean Anderson and Ruth Buchan included a chapter on crumbs in their cookbook on dealing with food waste, “Half a Can of Tomato Paste and Other Culinary Dilemmas.” (Harper & Row, out of print). Along with tips on storage and recipe ideas, they offer this handy list of crumb equivalents for times when you just don’t have enough saved crumbs on hand:
■ 2 standard slices of bread = 1 cup soft bread crumbs
■ 1 slice dry bread = 1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
■ 25 square saltine crackers = 1 cup cracker crumbs
■ 15 2 3/4-inch square graham crackers = about 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
■ 19 2-inch chocolate wafers = about 1 cup cookie crumbs
■ 22 vanilla wafers = about 1 cup cookie crumbs
Making use of your crumbs may feel like a small thing, but it yields delicious results and helps you be just a little less wasteful.