Hey, city dweller. My name
is Amanda McLemore.
I'm a sustainable food activists
from Chicago, USA.
And today we're going to teach you how to
master the art of creating less food waste.
When I was a child, every
time I would open the fridge,
I would find food that had
gone bad. Now over time.
I realized there was a couple
of tips and tricks I can
incorporate into my kitchen
in order to create less food waste.
And I'm going to share a few of
those things with you today.
Now, one of the first two things
that I always add into
my kitchen routine is to have
a compost bin and to start a garden.
And you could start
a garden whether indoors in
a small pot or outside on
the patio or in a backyard
and what this does is it helps
you to curb food waste because you
can harvest things that you
need, as you need them.
So think about if you purchase
herbs from a grocery store,
you'd normally purchase a lot
more herbs than you need, you
use it once and then
you'll throw away the rest of it.
So by having that herb in
the backyard or on a,
in a potting plant,
you can just harvest
what you need and then you
can save the rest in the live plant form
which just makes it a lot easier. For composting
we all create some form of food waste
it's inevitable, but it's so
much more sustainable if we keep
that food waste in the ground and
create this nutritious compost
that we can use in our garden again.
Storing food properly
to prevent less food waste.
If you store food properly whether
in your fridge or on your countertop,
you'll increase the shelf life
of that food item.
And this helps you out so all
your food doesn't start going bad at once.
So you can have the extra time
to be able to prepare the foods
as you need them instead of having
all this food going to waste all at once.
Now one of the other things
I love to do to prevent
less food waste is utilising parts
of the vegetables that
were not really told to eat,
so if you think about
carrot tops, beet greens,
and in the case of the
salad we are going to make today,
I love using the greens and
the stems and also the cauliflower itself.
Today I'm going to show you how to use
every part of the cauliflower in our chard
cauliflower salad recipe with
pickled grapes and fresh ricotta.
Now before we even start
using food waste in recipes,
we need to inspect it to make sure
that it's actually safe for us to use.
Now, I always look for
things like leaves that
may have gotten brown or soft and squishy.
We don't want to use anything like that.
Or if there's any mold on
the surface, of the cauliflower itself.
Now this goes for any vegetables.
And always if you don't feel
comfortable with cooking with
a food waste vegetable,
turn it into compost.
It is always safer if you use
your gut and only use
food that you're comfortable with cooking.
So the first thing I want to do is cut
the leaves of the cauliflower floret.
So all I'm gonna do is just slice them off
the base and set
them aside in a separate bowl.
Now we will use these
later when we are dressing our salad.
Now next, I'm going to cut up
the core or the stem of the cauliflower.
I like to cut these in about
medium-sized pieces so that
they all cooked evenly
with the cauliflower as well.
And for the florets i'll just cut them up individually.
I really like the flat
sides just because we're going to char these
and being able
to have that flat side to the cauliflower
it makes it really easy to get
some nice golden brown colour on the edges.
So after that, all we're going to
do is places this in a bowl and
mix it with some olive oil, salt and pepper.
And then we're going to place it on the comal.
Ending life in expiring foods
now, I know this has
happened to a lot of us where we have
yogurt or milk and it's at
its expiration date or
maybe a few days before.
And we don't really want to take
the risk of having sour cereal
So we end up pouring it out
and it's tragic because we can
make new things out of
food that's about to go bad.
In the case of today and our salad,
we're going to make a simple ricotta,
just using a few ingredients that
most of us already have in our kitchen.
We're going to start with two cups
of milk into a sauce pot
From there we'll add a teaspoon of
salt and a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.
Now, I'll turn the pot up to
medium-low heat and allow this to
heat up to a 185 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, I'll constantly stir
this just to make sure that
the milk does not
burn or stick to the bottom of the pan.
Now once we reach a 185 degrees,
I'll turn off the pot,
let it sit for ten minutes,
and then we can strain this into
cheese cloth and allow it to drain
for about 30 minutes to get all of
the whey removed from the ricotta.
Now, don't worry, we don't
have to throw away the whey either
we can use this in other recipes like smoothies,
or pasta sauces.
You can freeze it if you
don't have an immediate use for it.
So don't even think
about throwing this out either.
It's really,
really delicious in other recipes.
So for two cups of milk,
you get about a quarter
cup of ricotta cheese.
You can use this in any recipe
that calls for ricotta.
Now, I typically would use it the same day,
but you can keep it in the fridge
covered for about up to three days.
Quick preservation methods to
prevent less food waste.
Now, I love this one.
It's, you know me, I love
my little larder and I love
canning and preserving.
Now there's a couple
of quick preservation methods
that will help you to curb food waste.
One, you can dehydrate foods.
Second one, you can freeze foods.
And the third one, which we're going to
do today with these grapes,
are we're going to pickle them.
Now, I love pickling fruit
because it is kind of unconventional,
it's not something that we think of doing,
but it works really well with salads or
on cheese boards for
entertaining or for a stay at home happy hour.
To make the pickle brine
I add a cup of red wine vinegar,
a quarter cup of water,
and three-fourths a cup of honey.
Now you can use sugar, or maple syrup,
whichever sweetener you desire will work
perfectly in substitution of honey here.
Now after that, i'll add in the spices
I like to use chili flakes,
mustard seed, cloves, peppercorn
and then i'll add an a cinnamon stick,
fresh thyme from the garden,
you can use dry thyme as well
and a little splash of vanilla extract.
Now we'll bring this up to a boil and allow
all of the honey or sugar
to dissolve completely,
and just allow the herbs and the spices
to steep into the liquid
before we pour them over the grapes.
Now I take the grapes and I'll
stem them and put them in a clean jar.
I typically use about
a pound grapes for this recipe.
And I pour the hot brine over the grapes.
Now, I let this cool off
completely before storing it in the fridge.
And typically before I use it in a recipe,
I will let it sit for about a day just to
let the pickle brine
steep into the fruit itself.
And now I'm ready to make our salad.
We're going to take the greens that we set
aside earlier and place them in
a mixing bowl with a little bit of
olive oil and a little bit of salt.
Now, I'm gonna just massage
these greens first just to help them break
down and incorporate all of the
flavours into the greens better.
I do this with all of my brassica salads
it just makes for a better end product.
Now, I'll take the charred cauliflower florets
and stems that we charred earlier,
and I'll mix this into the bowl as
well with the pickled grapes
making sure that when I take
the pickled grapes out of the jar that we're not
putting any of the peppercorns or
mustard seeds into the salad.
Now, all we have to do is simply
dress this with a little bit of olive oil,
a little lemon juice,
salt and pepper, and
just make sure to give it a good stir.
All of these flavours
get mixed in really, really well.
Now, place this on a nice platter with
a garnish of that ricotta cheese
that we made earlier.
And this salad is ready to go.
Now, I love a salad for both
entertaining and just for
a simple meal at home.
It's a really great way to use up
foods that may have gone to waste.
And I'm super excited to see you
make the salad and just be
creative in all of
the different ways that we can use
up food waste and make something beautiful
with it. I cannot wait to see what
you guys create and we will see you soon.