 Getting the most out of every ingredient, that's the mark of a maker. The KitchenAid Blender Collection. Hello and welcome to the British Library food season, generously supported by KitchenAid. I'm Angela Clutton, my huge pleasure to be a guest director for the 2020 food season with Polly Russell who's the season's founder and curator for the three years the season's been running at the British Library. We launched the season this year in 2020 at River Cottage with a conversation between Hugh von Neuwittengstall and Bea Wilson and we've taken advantage of being here to prove called the event you're about to see. With Gail Balderson, executive chef at River Cottage and Melissa Hemsley, sustainability food race champion best-selling food writer. We're going to be cooking up a few dishes and talking about all the different ways we can minimize food waste at home. They're going to be giving KitchenAid Kit a little bit of a workout and I really hope that you all pick up some tips you can use in your everyday life in the kitchen. Over to Gail and Melissa. Thank you Angela, brilliant. Welcome to our session. It is more tasteless waste. I think I know a fair bit about food waste but this is your empire isn't it? This is where things do not get wasted. Yeah well I mean it helps when we grow all our own stuff. You really don't want to see anything going in the bin so it's it's ultra important that we use every last scrap of it and that goes for veg as well as meat and and all the rest of the ingredients that we use here at River Cottage. Today we've got a first fabulous ingredient and we can see it here on the bench and that's a Romanesco broccoli. It's a wonder of nature, it's perfectly helixical under a microscope and actually follows the Fibonacci sequence. Some mathematics facts for you there. And it's just delicious. And it is delicious that's the main thing so people often confuse it with a cauliflower. It's actually a broccoli very closely related though those two things but it has a much tighter head to it so it actually retains the flavor much better and it doesn't have quite so much water in it as well so that flavor really packs through when you cook it. So you won't get all that mushy, softy, soggy cauliflower stuff that people might be afraid of but if you had a cauliflower everything we're going to do with this you could do couldn't you? Absolutely a plain old cauliflower works perfectly yeah so I love a plain old cauliflower. But this is the beauty we do love a plain old cauliflower so what we're going to do we're going to use the head we're going to use the leaves we've got a couple of ideas haven't we? Yeah so nothing nothing there's going to go to waste it's all going to be in the finished dish but we are going to start with the center of it and that's really you know people consider that the star of the show but I really love the leaves they're probably one of my favorite parts they can be eaten really simply like spinach or any other greens kale so we're just going to snip out the head there and we'll pop those leaves just to one side for a minute. I mean that is hefty isn't it? Yeah so same same weight almost. Yeah so normally that goes straight in the bin with a lot of well a lot of chefs and a lot of kitchens would just throw that away I mean worse comes to worse you should put it in the compost and it can come back as an onion next year but we like to use it all. It will be born again. Exactly but this this is just you know that we're coming into the season of the the hardy greens we can talk through so many things I'll do a little quick fire test on you as to what you might do with it. Yeah all I would say is definitely don't boil it. Don't boil it. Stop boiling veg like nobody should boil veg anyway. We'll put that on a t-shirt shall we? Yes absolutely yeah so we're going to just take the florets here and again we're going to just nip around them and you can see those beautiful large flets really beautiful. With these we're just going to split the slightly larger florets down in half. We're going to pop them onto a baking tray like so and we're going to bake it roast it get it golden. So the beauty of roasting is it caramelizes all the sugars in the veg. If you try and boil Romanesco it gets waterlogged so all the water goes into that tight head and it becomes mushy like your grandma's cauliflower and maybe not your grandma's my grandma's. Once it's on the tray we're going to give it a quick season with salt and a little pepper. We're going to pop a sprinkle of black onion seed over the top now this is just a dish on its own pretty much for a cauliflower roast of black onion seeds with a squeeze of lemon absolutely beautiful but we're not paid to do simple things so we're going to do something much more complicated. We'll take it to the next level. We will indeed so. So do you think every time our instinct is to boil we should think no no more boil roast absolutely yeah or even grill or even grill yes if you've got the last few days of the summer or grill or raw like or don't cook it at all. For me boiling is is an absolute last resort and should be treated so all times. While that's in the oven we're going to get on with the cauliflower rice. If I do this I'll get this in here okay thank you so much that's okay just shove it in here really get it all grated up and I sometimes do do this with a box grater but why use a box grater when I could use this fantastic kit here absolutely save you save the effort a little bit of pulsing done four pulses and that has transformed the Romanesque stalk brilliant looks good what else are we going to put in there this would be good wasn't it sort of a cauliflower style tabouleh with some raisins and mint and parsley and so on but what are we going to do we're going to fry it up a little bit um I was going to do it raw actually okay let's go for it because it's so fresh yeah so you've got some parsley some fennel to put in there and a squeeze of lemon I reckon okay would be good trust me over here yeah yeah I'll trust you to do okay brilliant and then what what we're going to do with the leaves so the leaves we're going to start um something that we like to call everything from the garden barges at River Cottage love a bargy and we all love a bargy um but this uh is slightly different with the fact that we fill it full of lots of veg so we're going to take these leaves and we're going to just going to take the frilly bits now this base here can get used again so we can slice that and blend it just like Melissa's done with the end uh just needs a really thorough wash if we're going to use that base because it's right next to the ground and right next to the root so with these leaves we're going to start from the thick uh stalk end and we're going to finely slice those stalks these pickle really well I don't know whether you've ever pickled them love it yeah to be honest is there you probably know the rule if there is a rule when it comes to picking is there anything you can't pick off um no well veg wise black I've been picking my blackberries you can't pickle potatoes I don't think but um yeah fruit and most veg will pickle really really nicely a great way to preserve if you've got a glut of stuff as well so this now like I said before will fry up a bit like spinach or kale um again a lot of people even when they use the leaves they'll throw those big ribs away um which I think is a real waste and if you're really into the to your food you're going to lacto ferment those ribs oh yeah they are really really really amazing if you do that so do you think people uh I mean I know fermenting is is not a new thing but do you think in in 2020 and beyond 2019 perhaps people are much more interested in it when you really write it on menus and in your workshops we're going to ferment today and this is fermented it's a draw isn't it yeah absolutely so we've just written a book on it uh there you go uh yeah I think it's become much more prevalent and uh people are generally much more into their food and fermentation is really up there with um what people are interested in and it just it it just makes things it gives that umami boost to everything isn't it if you ferment it through um and it's also incredibly good for us I mean we get better fits out of it and I also think it really pulls together leftovers so if you're especially in the winter months when you just feel like everything feels very cooked or I've just roasted some verge and I've got to have that I've got to rewarm up some soup that having that topping of that sort of sharp acidity that crunch is so nice isn't it absolutely and I think that the first thing we normally ferment in the year of the wild garlic seeds yeah so that and that gives you a taste of the spring whenever through the year and it's a real I say when things are a bit gray and miserable you can pull out those spring walks almost it reminds me of that time of year which is which is great trip down memory lane okay so what's next so we've got some spring onions from the garden which we're going to chop down so obviously a traditional barge you would just use standard onions but there's nothing standard about what we do here so this is going to give it a really nice I love it and all your names as well make it so much more exciting everything from the garden barge yeah exactly so have you ever made the same do you think you've ever made the same dish twice obviously when your recipe desk thinks I know you're very good at that but that's the free that's the joy isn't it when it comes from not wasting is sometimes I think people like no leftovers like oh I've got to use that up but actually I feel rather than thinking you're being restricted you're actually the world is is opened up to what you can do with it absolutely it makes you way more creative and even if you use the same ingredients when you grow it yourself those ingredients aren't the same every time so you a carrot today it's very different from a carrot in october yes and a carrot in november so my october 2020 no sorry yes my summer 2020 courgette while bigger much more tasteless than last year exactly so which is frustrating however I now know what I need to do to boost it with everything else yeah so I mean normally the bigger the veg the less they taste of is the rule of thumb we tend to tend not to grow really big veg that's for showing at the county show and as a chef of sorry yeah that's it yeah we're not we're not massively interested in chef so we like to pull things quite young and that's all to do with sugar essentially so we all love sugar and although we shouldn't eat added sugar we do need natural sugars in our diet and those are really prevalent in young vegetables because those young vegetables are still trying to grow when plants are trying to grow their energy stored as sugar and when they're not trying to go it's stored as starch yeah so obviously there's a massive change in that so what's going on here when you picked these what's what's the fennel doing at this stage so that's fennel's just gone to seed so it's finished its flowering stage and those seeds are ripe now and the next stage of that life would be to dry out we're all quite familiar with dried fennel seeds but green fennel seeds still have that sweetness so there's still fruit at that stage so lovely in a pudding absolutely delicious in the pudding yeah and but good for savoury alike and biscuits and cakes amazing as well so would that be good in a carrot cake do you think i've got a really nice parsnip carrot cake would be good wouldn't it yeah carrot and fennel works amazingly together okay so your beautiful red carrots your yellow carrots your orange carrots spring onions yeah and that is the romanesco shredded leaves yeah and that was all of them right yeah that's all the leaves how much there is there yeah so you know this is a good this is a good amount there once they're all made and fried up it's certainly feeder family very generously the next vegetable we've got is one of our all-time favorites is chard um if you haven't grown veg grow some chard i mean it's pretty easy throw it in the ground it grows and how beautiful pickle the the stems exactly and also if you're just interested in garden for its color you can have veg and color at the same time so they're a kind of flowers exactly so they're kind of an ornamental as well as being a delicious vegetable and they're really lovely raw too aren't they in a salad especially when again just thinking about maybe we're blessed today but with the weather but thinking about um the months and months to come yeah um how like i know lots of us miss the salad field so young winter leaves like the chard the spinach the beetroot leaves what else could be quite nice for when you talked about few things raw here romanesco well are you touched on courgettes earlier you'll be courgettes i mean they're they're beautiful raw um ribbon down on a peeler um so you just peel the whole thing into a bowl squeeze of lemon they're a salad straight away yeah so they're they're eating straight away right yeah and normally we'd mix a bit of fennel in that as well and fennel is absolutely delicious raw um so we we tend to you can you can eat raw kale as well i mean kale is absolutely delicious maybe we'll massage some a little bit yeah and yeah raw kale salads absolutely and amazing for our digestive systems as well we're gonna mix all that veg together you can see we've got some pretty nice bright colors in there and the last bright color we're gonna put in there is a red onion uh that's just gonna add just an extra flavor and the red onions are just a bit sweeter than their white counterparts um and we're just gonna finely slice that i can't talk to you when you're going far oh okay um i love a raw leek my mum one of my mum's favorite salad is is um she makes a fabulous slaw and just loads of leek in it or french beans and and tomatoes and and leek for people that don't love red onions yeah would you suggest maybe they do a light pickle a little squeeze of vinegar or lemon to get them into it or just use a bit less yeah just leave it out or leave it out i mean these are called everything from the garden barges because you can use everything from the garden and they'll still be really delicious at the end of them so um because that's that's a good one isn't it i often feel like not that i mean you know when you go around when you go around to people's houses do you get roped into cooking all the time yeah right okay so then then do you find yourself going oh let me have a little look and you see like half an onion on a plate yeah and i'm like okay well let's use that one we don't need to start a new one because that's a good good chance to use up i mean some bits and bobs i'd always look in in the cupboards and fridge before dinner preparation so you can actually see what bits are floating around and one of my favorite dinners is bubblen's quick so just all the all the leftovers fried up with the poached eggs delicious i always do a friday fritter so whatever something like this actually exactly like this then and flavor it up okay looking gorgeous and beautiful so in there we're going to throw some ground coriander some turmeric curry powder don't stinge on the curry powder you should always buy a really good quality one there's a world of difference in in quality of curry powders so find one you like and and keep it well in an airtight container right so spices should always be considered as fresh food and if you can buy them a little bit at the time it's so much better if you can if you can get them from a shop in bulk and just pop me in your own jars so much better than the little pots you can get some brilliant refill shops especially my way have you got some good ones not so many down here but yeah i know the ones you mean yeah in London and Birmingham especially there's some great shops you can get wonderful spices in to finish that we've also got a really interesting flower so we've got some english yellow pea flower so yeah so traditionally a barge would be made with gram flour but we can't get english gram flour just yet we will be able to next year but it's not available yet this pea flower actually though it tastes much more of actual peas than gram flour can i have a sniff yeah absolutely yeah so it actually is a flavor in the barge rather than just a binder there's an extra boost it is an extra boost of flavor so that's going to go in there and we toss all the veg in that so it coats it with all those spices and if you had a wetter veg yeah just add a bit more flour that's fine so we're now adding a bit of water to this anyway to to form the batter so it's a bit of wet veg it's i've got to do in a job for you um actually and you know it'll be flavor rather than just plain water so that's it so now we've got a bit of cold water in there we're going to give it a mumble around and that will just form a batter around the veg and you don't want it to be too stodgy because then you get a really heavy stodgy barge and we've all had one of those from an indian takeaway that you know is the size of a tennis ball and a bit raw in the middle then when you get a light crispy one it's just like heaven isn't it to bite into so what are the so you're saying uh the things to look out for are having a feel it's like you know obviously get your hands in feel when it's about right and will you do a little test to one yeah we will take a little test to one in a minute um just as we're heating the oil up we can pop one in just see how it's holding in that um in that oil uh the secret really is you want as little flour in there as possible because we're not trying to make a cake we're not trying to make something that's really stodgy um so as little flour in there as possible you'll make a good barge last thing is obviously we need to season it so good pinch of salt or just put fruit in a barge yeah you can put some apples in here with some pears would go really nicely yeah absolutely or some dried fruit but we're gonna use our fruit aren't we we're gonna make a lovely little luscious chutney on the side so that mixture's ready to fry so we're gonna pop it to one side and then we're gonna check back in on that romanesco which i can smell already in the oven i think you've timed it perfectly i think not far off so we can see now that it's roasted um it smells really nutty now it's come out of the oven yep so that's that's looking really beautiful um so we're going to start finishing our our dish with that i'm going to pop some oil on ready to fry those barges start heating that up and then we're going to get this romanesco on the stove and make a sauce uh to go all the way around it so in that sauce we need an array of spices so this is our next set of ingredients you can see there we've got some we've got some dried fennel seeds rather than the fresh ones that you've been using there we've got some human seeds yet more curry powder turmeric and black onion and some tomato passata beautiful um and then a little bit of tomato puree will be needed just to thicken the sauce at the end so before we do anything we need to toast the spices yes we always toast the spices because that doubles the flavor at least and do you feel that if if we're honest sometimes we've got spices that are quite old that if we give them that toast it does we can definitely get more out of them can't we yeah you'll always get more out of spice by toasting them definitely and it's a step that gets skipped quite often and it's a shame really because it really it makes all the difference between between the flavors so i'd always recommend toasting those spices we've got a pestle and mortar here so we're going to bash those spices once they've had a little toast i can do that you can trust me with that girl excellent i can trust you with that it's very heavy come on gav and any have you got any favorite spice mixes spice combos that you love are you a harissa man do you love a razzalhanu i feel like they're such a good way of when you find a spice brand you love or a shot that's selling them is that's for me the easiest way to change up leftovers and change up a soup from staying the same and all i'm making a lovely spiced butter yogurt isn't it yeah i think it's it's spiced a great way to make veg more interesting and appealing to people merguez is one of my favorite oh yeah nice coriander caraway cumin and chili with a bit of paprika in you can jazz it with some fennel and other bits and bobbins as long as you've got that as a base there's always a jar of that in the cupboard yeah generally just my partner normally gets out and just smells it and puts it back because she just loves the smell of it so oh yeah just a little yeah instead of a coffee in the afternoon instead of a coffee in the afternoon a little smell of merguez but that's nice um but it's a great it's a great way to liven not only veg but fish and meat as well i feel like eggs in a sort of merguez tomato sauce shakshouks that would be wonderful isn't it absolutely wonderful so i mean that kind of area of the world sort of north africa kind of that kind of med sort of area has a great spice heritage so if you just look around that area there's some great recipes and great spice spices i i one of the things i'm trying to do over uh this year is well i like buying food for people anyway for their presence but buying them spice kits especially something that they might always think oh do i will i give it a go this year i was like this is the year to try a new spice yeah like last year i feel like we all completely if we weren't already in love with harissa i was like i feel like the spice blend of last year but a razzal hanu aura um and also we'll talk about green herbs and something like a zuge and a chimichurri all of these amazing ways chimichurri and chimula as well another chimula is a great shout favorite yeah probably my favorite way to eat mussels with a spoonful of chimula and cream and just brings them brings them completely i'll just take some a bit of lemon in there because that's lemon gorgeous absolutely gorgeous so well i think what we're doing with this one is so that those spices are going to go into uh this cauliflower we're going to turn it into a curry yes so we're going to have the barges we're going to have the rice and the and the and the the romanesco curry um we've popped the the same pan we've cooked the spices in we're going to drop a little bit of light oil in and then romanes has given those seeds a bash we're going to just pop them in and fry them for a minute and you should fry your spices when you're cooking with them again boost that flavor so we're all about just adding flavor to to those seeds at each step as opposed to at the end right let's put a poster at the end that's brilliant yeah no i like it i like it sort of almost a bash to the spices i like to bite into something yeah you get that you get that little pop as as you're um as you're going through the through your meal um so they're going to go in we're going to pop the black onion seeds in whole i don't really like to bash the onion seeds i think um they go a bit dusty and they're nice nice to eat whole uh so fry that and not only do we fry the spices we fried the powders as well so we're going to go in with a the curry powder and we're going to fry a nice amount of that do you grow many chilies we do grow many chilies yes we have a whole tunnel full of chilies um and there's some insanely hot ones Adam Adam our head grown gardeners grown some tricky one day well he i think he was planning on and then he led it slip that he he he'd grown a caroline reaper up there um so now i won't trust him in anything because those things are deadly but um so i was going to say my mum my whole life my mum's got this this uh chili oil i keep meaning to like turn into my new business idea but i call it mum's chili oil and she has made it forever in order to be able for people when you're cooking as a family or for cooking for anyone that doesn't love heat to be able to spoon their chili oil on instead that you can you know keep it um and yeah i've been trying to grow some chilies at the moment so and then but yeah pickling them a little bit and and what would you do with your do you ever make chili chili jams and so on to add well we do uh we tend to use them quite quite quickly yeah obviously you know we're very busy here have lots of guests and but the our favorite way of doing is if you salt them slightly cut them in half and salt them uh for about two hours and then you wash that salt off no no leave the seeds in great um then let them dry overnight once you wash the salt off and then we put them in the cold smoker smoked overnight then we dry them out in the hot cupboard until they're completely dry so we have them almost like a chipotle field to love them but our own our own brand of chipotle chilies if we didn't have our own smoker could we put them in a low oven and then sort of could we do anything dehydration wise or a little grill of them yeah you're just trying to get that um get the liquid out and just trying to get the liquid out exactly that so so i'll just pop some tomato and passata in there and we're just heavenly yeah so it's a really quick curry this one it's not a it's not a long-winded all-day job no so we just get that on the heat and i'm going to swap those pans over so i can get that oil heating up i'm going to give that for our barges curry a little season also basically half a lemon that you you may got there thank you very much more tasteless waste indeed and then so this is romanesco three ways because we've got the coli we've got the romanesco sam tabouleh here yeah which uh was a lovely easy job we gave me where i mix that in with the parsley and the lemon juice and some salt we've got the quick curry but i love that you roasted it and why are you recommending that people roasted it first so you just get that little bit of caramelization on the outside of it and it just boosts again it boosts the flavor um if you again if you boil that in the in the source of the curry for that it would just leech all the water out and go and it would break down and become mushy yeah you can roast it to right to the point that you need it and then just fold it into that sauce and that's pretty much ready so we're gonna just leave that gorgeous because you know what i like to do you go up on a sunday is like my main i've got a bit of energy cooking day obviously you cook every single day yeah but when i've got the oven on i like to do as many trays as possible so i'll do something like that and then i'll keep it in the fridge ready to go and then on a monday night yeah it's a quick turnaround isn't it i've basically cooked it ready to go so those few florets left over prime for a salad on the next day yeah i love a roasted cauliflower salad one of my favorites and i'm just gonna grab us some tasting spoons but in a moment what what do you like in your cauliflower salad what are you putting it um well i i love a bit of preserved lemon and actually we're talking about that well you could preserve these lemons now you've squeezed them pack them into salt and yeah and keep them in the fridge for a couple of months and then you get that preserved lemon out the back of it um but i love a piece a bit of preserved lemon and some um and just some veg some carrots some onions a bit like a tabula lots of mint that kind of stuff a couple of raisins a couple of bit of dried fruit yeah is a must in cauliflower salad um and you know if you want to go really sort of simple just some chilies and lemon and cauliflower like absolutely absolutely gorgeous so we're going to bring that barge mix back into the into the fold time to set hasn't it yep so you would notice it's it's kind of dropped down into the bolt from where we were before and we're going to like say we're going to do a little tester just to see that it's bound enough and that oil is getting hot enough you can see we've got a nice sizzle on the oil and that's holding perfectly so we're going to get on and fry enough for us to eat lovely so you don't smash it together in your hand you want it to be loose-ish but just bound slightly flattened balls so they cook quick enough to get the middle nice and crispy this would be excellent thinking about bobble and squeak if you're if you've had yeah i'm 35 i've had bobble and squeak every single christmas and basically every sunday in winter this would be an excellent way of changing it out wouldn't it yeah really shaved brussel sprouts and that do you like brussel sprouts i love brussel sprouts i don't like them boiled i've got that if you come around my house i'm not even getting anybody a pan and water out but brussel sprouts do you know what i love roasting them and and a little bit of miso is really fantastic the company that you mentioned that make the split pea flour the british pulse pioneers they they do really fantastic miso-esque umami flavoured pastes yeah they do make it out of fava beans yes yeah so so it's but it is it is like a british miso yes i think i'm not i'm not we can call it that yeah i think i'm brave enough to call it that uh they also do a great one out of split peas as well which is actually a bit more miso-esque than the fava bean one as well because you think it's if you blindfolded yourself you could yeah you could yeah it takes you straight straight to that and that for a little bit mixed into any soup that's lacking because what i want to just ask you i might ask you now because you've got quite a few bargees to make there well i'm gonna make enough for us today okay just enough for us but yeah um what would you keep okay so as well as your spices and like your mergue spice mix that you keep to hand what else would you recommend that's that doesn't cost too much um that just adds so much flavour in such small quantities so i would say something like this uh a properly fermented miso traditional japanese style or our friends with the fava bean paste what else is just really worth having to just add umph to stuff uh jar of kimchi jar of kimchi is great absolute must for me yeah it it goes in everything i you yeah you try i i end we make something called kimchop which we chop up the kimchi oh lovely into a smaller grade um and how big's your kimchi to begin with well we make this is the one do you make yeah so yeah we normally so traditional kimchi is quite big the leaf in it right we chop it down it yeah and it works slightly quicker as well yeah to turn it around so could you could you kimchi up this this guy i never have but i don't see any reason why that wouldn't kimchi up perfectly well it probably it probably works as a kraut as well yes a bit along the sauerkraut yeah yeah it certainly has the right texture oh lovely so you would add kimchi to um just your brunch your eggs eggs is an amazing one for kimchi yeah i tend to like blending into butter and put it on fish as well works really really nicely yeah kimchi butter on some fish yeah any roasted verge because i feel like i'm thinking about all the things that i do and then um i get to the point and i go all my boyfriend might go oh my gosh another tray of roasted verge and it's all these things that we think about because it is such an easy way of doing it isn't it because we don't boil yeah we roast so you know yeah so a simple you could make simple fritters and then put like a kimchi mayo on top exactly yeah butter yeah what else so um what should you love the other paste that you keep in the what's in your fridge mayonnaise but homemade obviously obviously yeah obviously and i've also worked out how to make a really nice squash mayonnaise which is vegan as well so you use this so you're not talking about aquafaba you're talking about you're using squash to create that yeah so use squash as as the binder as the egg egg because no you haven't so you're actually you'll have to reveal this to us do you want to save that for a book i just have yeah i'm not gonna tell you the recipe but i'm gonna call my agent a squash mayo what is what i thought i'd get it i was actually trying to get it out of the squash so you're roasting it so you roast the squash yeah and then you puree it yeah with a bit of garlic and then you and with that puree is really tight and goes quite starchy if you get the right squash like a crown prince and then you add a little bit of vinegar or a squeeze of lemon juice and a teaspoon of mustard and then you bring it out with your oil uh in a blender and it turns into oh my gosh sounds amazing i was actually trying to make something else when i made what were you trying to make i was trying to make a squash ketchup yeah uh oh i love it i love it it was a surprising it was and i and i the the ketchup was quite right so i tried to emulsify some oil into it to make it a little bit more creamy yeah and it turned into mayonnaise and i was like oh hang on a minute squash mayonnaise and then you don't need to use anything too too complicated absolutely and it's just getting more veg in yeah you know exactly so i'm i'm always a fan of when something that's been you know a vegan version of or a veggie version of i'm like you i eat everything but if you can get a vegan or a veggie version that doesn't use a complicated ingredient let's say and uses your veg then you're ticking off all the boxes of not wasting you're getting more veg in yeah all these things i mean veg is obviously a massive part of our lives here our last cookbook much more veg was purely vegan although it doesn't really say it in big letters yeah um whereas our first veg book had a lot of dairy and cheese and stuff in it so i've spent quite a lot of time cooking your vegan food over the last few years as well as various other things that we do um but it's the most inclusive way to cook for people because you know virtually everybody's going to be able to eat what you cook so it's a way i i feel was really nice to cook for people um i agree i agree and then and then so what are your because i think that's really interesting is when people are thinking i've got to cook for my friends with different dietary requirements sometimes that i feel is the moment where you create more waste because you're getting so many options and buying so many ingredients to try to keep everyone happy yeah you often end up with more waste uh which is then frustrating and you end up feeling guilty so what have you got because you said you've been experimenting a lot yeah have you got any things the things we shouldn't waste our time trying to do to please everybody and things that we could do instead so like that squash mayo yeah what rather than make two different maos just make squash yeah i think the thing um that people are scared of the vegan word because it does a little bit hark back to a time where that food wasn't particularly interesting it was a bit great i was brought up as a vegetarian so i didn't eat meat until i was 16 so i have quite a lot of experience with this as a as a child as well um i think the thing is if you make it really tasty and don't tell them it's vegan they they're just like this is brilliant this is great and then you go well actually you haven't eaten any any kind of protein today the animal protein today um i've done a banquet for 450 people at the savoy which was purely purely vegan and 60 at the room wouldn't believe i didn't put bacon in the starter what did you put in it well we smoked onions oh we stuffed smoked onions um and we made it was a glaze that tasted almost like marmite that went on the outside of them yeah so when they went out into the big banquet room the whole room smelt of bacon sandwiches and it was good old marmite and it was it wasn't it wasn't and a humble onion and a humble onion and a humble onion yeah can i do anything um just sort of we could just use a cloth for these barges just to drain the oil i take that that would be great and then we're ready to serve i think so if you've got your yes um cauliflower rice to to hand if you want to pop a little bit in those bowls i would love to i might just do one more on the front i might put your fennel yes fennel in because it's so pretty and not something i ever have at home yeah i mean well that's okay so we said kim okay so i'm just thinking more flavor flavor boosters of things that people might want to invest in or ask for a present so we've got kimchi we've got miso or the equivalent we've got a great spice paste that's going to come in useful what about things they might already have have you been have you often get asked i've got this in my cupboard what can i do with it i bet you get asked that a lot that's a great way of not wasting because we're not just talking about fresh veg are we we're talking about all the pastes that you've bought because you followed an recipe in a yeah supplement and then you bought what i mean i i mean nothing's been surprised but i think the thing people shouldn't be scared of is making a mistake so they've got something they should try it just try it out yeah taste if you taste it first your brain might automatically tell you what it goes with you might taste it and go good shout that that's going to be amazing with a cauliflower i mean it's how chefs work do you think there are any rules i mean when it comes to pairings because i feel like a lot of people will say i don't know you mustn't you know someone that's self-taught and grew up like you know i loved watching ready steady cook because it was very much like chuck it all in you know and have a go and and i feel that um obviously i grew up watching river cottage too yeah but did you did you think you'd be here i first saw Hugh on telly when i was when i was just leaving school and i'd like to remind him that on every occasion i can um but that was quick on the wild side so we were quite excited slightly after that but yeah because it's fun and hands on and all of those things that you want and it's exactly what food should be which is fun and hands on and make people happy and and then it's a thing a great thing to share so apart from don't boil you don't really i don't feel you have any no i think flavour rules do i think food food i started training in the 90s and food was still quite staid and you know if you cook french food you cooked in a very certain way and i think all those rules now have been looked at by chefs of sort of our generation and we we just question everything well why is that a rule and that's quite silly so let's just do something completely different yeah and it's quite interesting saying you know being self-taught you you don't actually get that set of rules put into you right at the start which is great yeah because if you get constricted at the start it's very difficult to break out of that well my mum Filipino mum you know the greatest sin oh hello there the greatest sin was wasting so actually if you didn't try well you don't even try you had to eat it yeah yeah it didn't really matter yeah but obviously now i don't want my friends to just eat my food i want them to enjoy it what's going on here so this is just a bit of coriander and this is another example of using a whole plant so we've got the leaf again green seeds rather than dried coriander seeds and they're a great great little thing to to eat as well and you eat those fresh and then we've got coriander flowers as well so coriander loves the flower in the summer which which makes the leaves less useful actually you don't you don't get so many leaves and but the flowers are not only really pretty but they still have that perfume yeah perfume hit coriander and so we're just going to pop our romanesco curry on there and not that we needed any more flavor because this is huge amounts of gorgeous flavor and and but you can i know that i'll still be able to really taste the bed which is lovely too i love yogurt for or or like a nut butter swell or a seed swell for just a last minute when you think oh gosh is that a bit boring if you just want to show off the last minute toasting up your spices like you did or frying off your spices and swelling them through yogurt whether it's a coconut yogurt or a you know yeah full fat dairy is always really nice isn't it i think yogurt lends itself well to lots of things because again it's a fermented product so it's deeper in flavor to a lot of dairy and it's quite interesting with the dairy you can almost tell what the cows been eating if you get the right dairy if it's been on summer grass you can you can taste it when it goes into silage you can taste it as well but yeah you're right a few a bit of herby yogurt or or nutty yogurt or cd yogurt pumpkin seeds through yogurt is one of my favorites lovely and have a lot of fun i think if anyone's got any packets or jars or of anything of of of seeds i think i i try and you know your big thing is roasting can't go wrong with yeah roasting uh also we're talking about toasting so toasting up your spices anyway especially when they're a bit staleer than you'd like staying with nuts roasting of beans and chickpeas anything that that wants it there i uh did some cooking last weekend with my friends the rangoon sisters they make Burmese food they were toasting up gram flowers and tossing it through salads which create this lovely sauce and yeah amazing yeah yeah it's toasting roasting yeah it's just changing it's just changing the properties in there by by introducing that heat you just you just times the flame by two every time um it's a really really easy fix um so i think we're nearly nearly ready to eat to be honest stunning um so we've worked our way through one whole vegetable pretty much with a little bit of help from veg from the garden um so this is this is what we started with yeah um and we've ended up something like this in a pretty uncomplicated way amazing can't wait to delve in yeah well let's have a try so that is a uh romanesco stem the leaves into a barge and the florets into a beautiful curry yep so that's yeah one whole vegetable in a bowl okay let's try it let's try it so get that one out of the way and then okay i'm gonna dive right in through the leaves yeah eating through a jungle it's so big wow oh i'm not i'm not gonna leave anything left for you i'll have a little go at this one then so yum thank you it's pretty good even if i say so myself and the barge is lovely and crunchy not too doughy in the inside really nice finished it i've got to say your cauliflower rice makes it that lemony that leminess is beautiful i think through there that is lovely girl oh yum okay everyone's got to try and find a romanesco if not broccoli cauliflower yeah absolutely yeah i mean so good if you go to a local shop you'll probably get one with more outsides as well so um we'll just try and find a local farmer for that that bit of it and then we can do the whole dish in one go i was gonna say i know friends that have um not been able to find cauliflower with their leaves and they've asked their local shop if they could think about bringing the leaves back and and now they're they're very happy and they're paying similar prices the leaves not going to waste yeah i mean more inspiration the farmer gets a better deal because he gets paid for his whole vegetable rather than just the center of it absolutely that's very important it's better for everybody better for every win win for everyone and this is a win-win dish brilliant love it okay what's next then okay so tidy up and we'll carry on we're gonna have a tidy up and then we're gonna move on to our chutney all right okay so we're gonna make a little chutney now yeah yeah absolutely any any fruit chutney yeah this is a bit of everything chutney i think we should call it um and this is this is great for some some firmer fruits that may be left over in your fridge we was guilty of maybe having that wrinkly apple in the fruit bowl or that that pair that's slightly gone over but it's also good for unripe fruit as well so if you grow your own and you've got some fruit that hasn't quite ripened up by cooking it into a chutney you'll you'll speed that process along so yeah it's a really good way to avoid throwing anything in the bin underripe overripe bit bashed yeah our bashed is absolutely fine yeah we should never we should never worry about cooking with bash fruit it might not be that nice to eat raw but should certainly end up in a saucepan somewhere along the line and also if you're at the shop and you see you know if you if you're like a bit freer and easier you haven't got your heart set on something specific and you see a bit of bash fruit and it's on for a deal absolutely it might turn out to be the best didn't you've ever had well i mean i'm always up for a deal um i'm i'm a scottish so you know i know i'm i'm a filipino i love a deal yet yeah it's not even called a deal it's just yeah it's just what you buy isn't it yeah um i think you know there's no such thing as seconds for me with with grading produce it's all it all has a great use and interestingly the the farms that we buy from around here the organic farms i just buy everything they produce so even if it is a bit marked or or bruised i feel it's my responsibility as a as a chef to make sure that that veg gets put to to good use and i think as a consumer that should that should definitely not put you off no um no because really the more we complain about less than perfect fruit the more we are actually playing quite an important part in the role of food waste by demanding perfection and actually looking for them looking for the most charming and interesting shapes and sizes i mean it's all going to taste the same isn't it it's going to be absolutely delicious and it's it's our job to to put it to good use yeah i think actually um veg that looks a bit weird uh and a bit more interesting actually tastes better because it's probably more from a heritage variety of crop um the uniform sort of size parsnips and carrots that we get are just grown for their success not their flavor they're going to be the right shape the right size grow grow quickly uh and fit into bags and boxes on the supermarket shelf so i i tend to find the the veg you're going to your back garden for example it never looks like the stuff you get in the shop because it's grown naturally and it tastes you've seen my veg yeah i'm really proud of it but i am actually like yeah drawn towards the different shapes i haven't even shown you my crazy shaped um aubergines yet no um but you're you're right absolutely i don't know when we got so set on one particular way of looking but actually it has been really pleasing to see um you know you were cooking with a yellow carrot you got your yellow courgette there you know the good old fashioned purple carrots yeah the purple carrots the og carrots yeah thanks for those pairs the original carrots yeah you know the story about why they're orange oh i do yeah so just go on tell tell everyone they were just designed um for a birthday present from the king of holland and the family is the orange family so they made orange carrots so um that's a great fact for for a zoom quiz it is start again yeah um so we've got in here we added uh vinegar apple side of vinegar a bit of honey um British honey week is coming up actually yeah so your lovely pairs could be apples as you say could be absolutely anything yeah plums are really good in this chutney as well um even soft fruit like raspberries will go into a chutney if you if you if you grow your own raspberries you tend to end up with a bowl that's slightly overripe and bashed um and obviously chutneys are not just for cheese lovers though we are cheese lovers yes why why are we making chutney what would you put it in i mean i'd put it i love it in a gravy i'll put a spoonful of yeah in a gravy so i mean chutney is a great thing to again live and other foods up yeah i mean it is packed full of that flavor of um of uh it has the flavor enhancers in it the vinegar that and the sweetener that we put in honey you can use sugar if you if you so desire yeah um and those those flavors um called a gastric sugar and sugar and vinegar together and this uses a classic flavor enhancer so you would say again a gastric a gastric it's called um and that is the thing you put in tomato soup to make it taste like Heinz so yeah i don't say that that good old fashioned the the flavors that like soothe our childhood wounds yes right those comforting flavors yeah absolutely so um but yeah i mean chutney goes in right into sandwich with salads oh yeah again like say with cheeses uh all of those things uh and the last touch we're gonna put in there is we're gonna put a bit of a chili in there so um should we play chili roulette and just guess which one we're gonna put in but i'm scared of what you told me about that man adam yeah yeah that gardener adam yeah i think this one this one's uh looks pretty good um and do you do you deseed i never deseed no i never deseed it's totally pointless it's where all the flavor and heat is because you could use two chilies and deseed them or you could just use one chili with the seed in yeah no there's nothing wrong with chili seeds i think the unfortunate bit of being a chef you're gonna use a chili you have to try it before it goes in anything otherwise you make something completely inedible so it's fallen to me to try this one so we'll all watch and check your sweat levels a little bit taken from the fat end of the chili just rubs against the tip of your tongue will give you a good indication and you see i haven't collapsed on the floor choking no but it is quite spicy is it yeah i'm gonna give you how much are you getting in we're gonna put about half of that chili into the pot okay can i tell you what my mom would do right now with the other half not make her famous chili sauce she'd get a little bit of vinegar have i got any left she'd get a she'd get a jar she'd get a bit of vinegar some salt she'd smush a garlic into it and she would just make garlic vinegar and then with um any kind of Filipino soup noodle soup or and anything does that tang and heat is lovely together no it's amazing that sort of stuff so i'll handle you those that's in gosh this is looking quite beautiful the pair in the um yeah my mom's friend always makes me chutneys um so i've i've probably not been making them enough myself but back thinking about spices as well your merguez spice that you mentioned would be amazing in this wouldn't it yeah yeah i mean chutney is a real blank canvas to be honest you can you should really experiment with it and just throw throw whatever you like in there so we're saying gravy soups obviously your cheese sandwiches absolutely then when you run out of brown sauce yeah throw it in the blender in its brown sauce lovely i mean oh yeah yeah so um saving on plastic too not buying another plastic bottle of something exactly okay can we do some quick fire talk us through some more veg uh you know your your average veg because we tend to be i know lots of us are very much interested in seasonal purchasing but but you know the winters are long and dark and gray and and we do end up sometimes that with with that you know here's another turnip i'm just thinking that feeling of gosh not another parsnip no thank you we are lucky to have the food but what what would you do to say your root area your your parsnips your turnips your celeriac your swedes which often we run out of steam for don't we apart from mash okay we all know we love a a swede mash and a yeah parsnip mash what else can we do i mean it's interesting mentioned celeriacs again that's a vegetable that eats really well raw as long as you as long as you brighten it down it we make a really nice hazelnut so chopped hazelnut celeriac and apples together just dressed with lemon juice and a little olive oil and that's it that's a beauty as long as you dress it about 30 minutes before you need it that celeriac starts to soften yeah it's a slightly and you and you've got that beautiful slaw on there and if you're lucky enough to get the tops of your celeriac you can chop some of that as a herb through as well and you get that really beautiful celery flavor from from all of that so um is there anything because of all the veg the celeriac has got the the thickest gnarliest is there anything we can do with that do you reckon what the skin yeah yeah so there is is there yeah okay so i i've got to confess i've been putting that in my compost and not doing yeah i mean you do have to work with it you have to you have to dry it out needs a little bit of love okay so you have to dehydrate it and blend it and turn it to celeriac powder um is the way to do it i might bring you my pill but yeah it's it's a long-winded it's a long-winded process of doing it if it's if it's cleaned really well it will boil into soups um but you need to give it a really good clean so it will maintain you know the dirt from the ground so we can make some some some remoulade or apple and celeriac slaw type vibe what about with parsnips what would you do with parsnips so one of our most well well received parsnips dishes is we actually beer batter them wow so we lightly lightly steam is that for the vegans that's for everyone that's for everyone that is yeah so we steam them very lightly just to just to start cooking them absolutely into flour a beer batter made with a light beer a nice fizzy beer yeah and then you dip it in deep fry them and serve it with a bit of curry salt and some garlic mayonnaise maybe you're squashy squashy oh my gosh that's amazing and everybody is blown away by that i bet meat eaters and vegetarians alike so that's a really nice funky way of doing it's nice nice thing for like canapes and parties oh my god that sounds amazing i love that okay what about okay carrots i feel like people will end up with a wrinkly carrot or we often buy a bag of carrots or a bunch what what could we do apart from a fritter apart from a barge yeah i mean carrots they do make amazing soups at any point yeah i mean that i mean that is one of my favorite soups through the winter is a carrot soup it doesn't have to be carrot and coriander no but we could change it up by toasting off different seeds for on top and spices right exactly about chili in there some preserved lemon a bit of nigella in the soup as well always works really really really well and actually just to turn into to a puree for for dinner yeah if it is a bit wrinkly just just simmer it down in a little bit of butter or or some olive oil and a touch of water and then you blend it together if it's olive oil it emulsifies through and turns into a really creamy puree as well so um carrots if they do go a bit over they're certainly not the end of their life and if they're really really wrinkly they can still go in the stock pot i mean there's still absolutely still there's still an out for them in the stock pot so yeah never really waste them and i and i think something to say as well is if if if we don't have if one doesn't have enough time to just you know it's all easy isn't it just whip up a stock i i keep mine in a reusable baggie um might all my veg scraps chuck it in the freezer and then when i've got the motivation to make a veg stock yeah i'm on it absolutely yeah i do and then i tend to sieve it off reduce it down and put it into ice cube trays and freeze it so i've got my own stock cubes to take out one at a time excellent yeah nice one yeah that is like a real satisfying move isn't it when you you know when you've got an ice cube tray of stock you're like okay because you can make anything delicious yeah i mean there's good stocks in the base of so many different things certain things you literally can't make without good stock so it's to have it to hand will make your evening cooking back from work so much easier and most stock cubes are packed full of salt as well so if you can if you're gonna avoid that that's that's an amazing it's a great step towards good food good investment isn't it that little bit of time put a nice podcast on yeah put a British library episode of something on make some stock all right get off i'm about ready what do you reckon yeah that looks good yeah because we can always cook down that sauce a little bit more can't we or add a little bit more or less smells amazing yep so i'm just going to pop it in the kitchen aid now and give it a blend that was our pears that was our chili that was our tomato a squashy tomatoes vinegar honey bit of garlic as well right yeah and there's one ingredient that we do need a bit of salt if you want to pop that over nice little flaky sea salt going in there just to give it that last boost of flavour on with the lid and there we go okay now that's blended up so we can see a bit of a better consistency on that so a little taste in a bowl for you and is it cool that's going to solidify and and thicken up isn't there a little bit yeah and also give it a give it a couple of days in the fridge that's excellent yeah it's really good oh so good get all the veggie down on that honey coming through absolutely beautiful yeah a few weeks in the fridge and that will get just better and better and better and a great reason to save all your jars and clean them up uh angela come and have the vinegar queen see what she thinks about chutney i can't wait to try it oh have a have a little um what can i grab have a look have a bit of courgette thank you great way to eat a double courgette action that that is a completely lovely it's a great little sauce isn't it that was so brilliant i feel like i learnt so much you you are so great i really hope you all learnt loads of well and really enjoyed it plenty more to come on the British Library food season over the next couple of weeks we've got tom carriage and ken harm future dunlop loads of amazing people but for now that's it from river cottage and the British Library food season