My Zero Waste kitchen

Hey hey!

I believe there are many great bloggers on the internet focusing on how to make a kitchen ‘Zero Waste’ and sharing their amazing recipes. I personally can highly recommend Zero Waste Chef. Definitely, I do not mean to be a zero waste food blogger from now on.

Anyhow, over the years I collected some super cool and easy recipes… no, they are not recipes. They are more like inspirations. For example what to do with over ripe bananas (I mean of course you can make banana bread, but what else…) or that actually you can eat cauliflower leaves (caulileaves?!:)) and it is delicious!

Radish top pesto

So did you know that you can eat the leaves of radish?! I adopted this recipe into our eating routine when I joined the Dublin CSA and we received the radish straight from the soil together with its green. I know some people put them in salads, but I don’t really like the structure or the outer part of the leaves, they are kind of hairy.

So what I do with them, wash the radish, cut the green parts, add to the food processor with some nuts/seeds (I prefer to use sunflower seeds as they grow locally here where I live and they are cheaper than other nuts/seeds) a clove or two of garlic, oil of your choice (again I prefer to use some locally produced oil), nutritional yeast (or of course you can add Parmesan cheese if you prefer that), salt and pepper and the key ingredient is definitely lemon juice. I like to add some of the pasta water to the mix. Just blend it. So simple. Add to your pasta. A bit more nutritional yeast. And voila, it is ready to eat.

Cauliflower leaves

Cauliflower leaves are amazing and so many people are not aware that actually you can eat them. Sometimes in supermarkets when we see a big bunch of leaves left behind we just ask the employees if we can take them (for our hamster). So far they always said yes, otherwise they anyway just threw them out.

But what to do with them? You can add to curries, stir fries or soups. However, my favourite is to bake them in the oven. After washing them, I toss some oil, salt and pepper and bake it in the oven until the green part starts to get crispy. Try this out and thank me later!

Over ripe bananas

It happens with everyone. Leaving your banana too long on the kitchen counter and it gets too ripe to eat as it is. Adding them to a smoothie or baking a banana bread with them is a great idea. But let me give you here two more alternatives.

Fried bananas

I learned this recipe from my host mom back in my early twenties when I was in Australia for 3 months. So get some margarine or butter, add to a frying pan. Sliced your bananas in. Let them fry, cook for 3-5 minutes. Add some orange juice, coconut flakes. You can top it up with some booze like rum if you do not serve it as a breakfast.

Baked banana

That is one of my favourites in 2020. I was introduced to this desert during the first lockdown. You take your whole banana, unpeeled. Make a vertical cut, but do not cut through. Add some chocolate into the gap. Put it into the oven until the banana peel turns dark and the chocolate melts. Yum!

Written on November 27th, 2020 by Celia Somlai

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