#wastenotwantnot

                                                   In an Italian restaurant making pizzas

When the first episode of Hugh's War On Waste was shown on TV #wastenotwantnot was trending in the UK within the first half hour. Such was the outrage of the British public regarding the unfair practices by supermarkets towards their growers and suppliers and the shocking waste perpetrated by their cosmetic standards that it caused a social media storm.

Needless to say, I was overjoyed by the reaction, however, I had to ask myself, were people so completely unaware of the situation? Given that we have become so accustomed to over supply and overindulgence, will our outrage be a storm in a teacup?

        Just one small section of a single supermarket of which the UK has thousands

Globally we waste enough food each year to build a mountain 2 miles across and 8,000 feet high, how can we justify this when there are still so many suffering from food poverty and starvation?

Unfortunately, as I don't have a dog (let alone chickens or pigs) the combobulation of leftovers and scraps found each week in my fridge are fed to my family. Last week I had accumulated some odds and ends, garlic and anchovy paste, some cheese sauce, a bit of leftover chicken stir fry, homemade tomato sauce, leftover tuna and half a mozzarella ball. They all desperately needed using up but I couldn't think of a way to combine them into one 'delicious' meal. Then the penny dropped! Pizza started off as a means for Italian housewives to use up leftovers such as bread dough, tomatoes, cheese and whatever else they had in their cupboard and my leftovers lent themselves very well to pizza (ok, maybe not the chicken stir fry, but it went on anyway!)

Hotch potch pizza

Recipe
For the dough
500g strong plain flour
2 teaspoons salt
10g yeast
325ml lukewarm water


Put the flour and salt in a large bowl
Dissolve yeast in warm water and gradually add to the flour, mixing well until you obtain a dough

Shape into a ball and cover with a cloth, rest for 5 minutes
Knead the dough for 10 minutes (very therapeutic) until smooth and elastic
Split dough in half and Shape each into a ball, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for 30 minutes
Sprinkle some flour onto a clean surface and carefully spread your dough with your fingers, or roll with a rolling pin into a circle about 35-40 cm in diameter, making the border slightly thicker

Preheat the oven to 250c/gas mark 10
Put your pizza bases on flat baking trays and now you can top them as you please, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle cheese (good way of using up older pieces of cheese) and chopped tomatoes on top, tuna and sweetcorn, leftover ham or chicken pieces......
Place in the hot oven for 7-10 minutes depending how crisp you like your pizza

Remove from the oven, drizzle with olive oil, season and eat immediately

There's really nothing easier than knocking up a bit of pizza dough, and topping the pizzas is also great fun if you've got children, and if you're using up leftovers it makes for a wonderfully economical meal!

'The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.'
- Calvin Trillin.

I'm pretty sure that'll be the epitaph on my tombstone!

Love Donna xxxxxxxxx

Don't Knock It Till You've Tried It!

Food focused television is a growing phenomenon with celebrity chefs becoming some of our most recognised superstars, we watch them on TV (we're fed roughly 500 hours of TV cookery a week) delivering mouth-watering dishes and think about how we can recreate them.

But how many of us actually do? I particularly love Nigella (have you noticed in the new series, simply Nigella, that she has a pink kitchen!) Nigella's backdrop is always fairy lit and alluring, her cookery style is very seductive and on face value her recipes seem achievable. For many of us, though, visual consumption has replaced actual cooking, I often buy recipe books that accompany TV shows such as Nigella's, however, in the cold light of day the recipes suddenly become less enticing.

Masterchef The Professionals is also currently on TV and interestingly many of the 'professional' chefs fail the first and most basic skills test. This week saw chefs failing to execute a buck rarebit (a glorified cheese on toast) which to be honest even I can do, but it does beg the question, if professional chefs are struggling, what hope have we got?

So, rather than waiting for Nigella's new book, I jotted this next recipe down as I watched her prepare it and literally struck while the iron was hot. Unfortunately, Nigella has yet again been lambasted on Twitter regarding this recipe, however, I thought it was quite ingenious and both I and Glenn thoroughly enjoyed it, as the saying goes: 'Don't knock it till you've tried it!'

Nigella's Caesar salad

Recipe
1 Romaine lettuce, cut diagonally
2-3 anchovy fillets
1 clove garlic
Half a lemon
Parmesan cheese
1 free range egg

Place lettuce in a baking tray

Cook anchovies in a small pan for a couple of minutes until slightly caramelised

Remove from heat and grate in the clove of garlic
Drizzle over lettuce

Place under a medium grill for 4-5 minutes until slightly charred
Remove and squeeze lemon over the lettuce, pop back under the grill for 2 minutes
Meanwhile, fry the egg
Place lettuce on a plate, sprinkle with grated Parmesan to taste and finish with the fried egg

What I can tell you about this dish is that the fishiness evaporates into a delicious salty hit whenever you caramelise anchovies (I use them in all sorts of recipes.) The saltiness of the anchovies and Parmesan compliments the sweetness of the cooked lettuce, and the soft oozy egg becomes a silky sauce, all delicious mopped up with crunchy toasted bread. As a light lunch or supper this is also an incredibly economical dish!

'Anyone who's a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: is it good?  Does it give pleasure.'
- Anthony Bourdain.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Use Your Loaf

A selection of greatly reduced food which I bought at my local Co-Op saving myself around £40.

I applaud Hugh's War On Waste (chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's campaign) and am avidly following his Facebook page. There are some great contributions, with people posting recipes which hi light how best to use up leftovers, something my readers will know, is very close to my heart.

After banging on this past couple of years about food waste, it's encouraging to see people embracing Hugh's campaign, and I think people are really starting to employ common sense and ethics.

Hugh has written a very clever hypothesis which asks us to imagine: you're leaving the supermarket after a weekly shop, trolley piled high with delicious food. Now picture yourself stopping by the stores wheelie bins, pulling out a few potatoes, a bag of salad, a couple of eggs, half a loaf of bread, a couple of bananas and half a packet of biscuits and throwing them straight into the bin. Sounds crazy, but essentially this is what we're doing with our food.

Of course, we don't bin it as soon as we've bought it, however, regardless of whether it still looks and smells good enough to eat - if its tipped over its use by date - we chuck it in the bin.

UK families are throwing away £700 of perfectly edible food every year with bread, potatoes, bagged salad, fresh fruit and milk being the most wasted items. Sadly people aren't utilising their freezers, bread freezes extremely well as does fish and meat (including bacon and ham) also butter, prepared vegetables, cheese and various fruits. With a bit of imagination we can begin to curb our lavish wasteful ways.

                       I store potatoes in paper bags in my garage where they keep very well

I rarely buy bagged salad, however, I often end up with tired odds and ends in my salad compartment and vegetable box. I recently had a delicious salad in Spain which I tried to replicate with some of my 'seen better days' ingredients and it worked incredibly well.

Walnut and cheese salad

Recipe
2 carrots
1 onion
1 lettuce
A bunch of spring onions
A large handful of sultanas
Blue cheese
Balsamic vinegar (I used vincotto, balsamic flavoured with velvety fig)
Honey
Chopped walnuts

Grate carrots, cabbage and onion into a bowl

Add chopped spring onions and lettuce leaves

Add some crumbled blue cheese

In a separate bowl combine balsamic vinegar and honey to taste

Add sultanas to salad

Combine all the ingredients and drizzle with dressing
Scatter walnuts on top and serve

This salad is a delicious combination of sweet and salty with mouthwatering textures, delicious served with crusty bread.

'Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.'
- Criss Jami

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Let's All Go Shoplifting At The Supermarkets!

                                 A photo taken in January at my local Waitrose supermarket

Back in November of last year I wrote a post: 'The great supermarket scandal.' I had taken issue with my local Waitrose, who didn't have a reduced section in their store and furthermore, weren't reducing items of food that had reached their sell-by date until very late in the day. Consequently, heaps of edible food was ending up in their bins on a daily basis. After my little chat, miraculously, a few weeks later a reduced section appeared and credit where it's due, I wrote a post: 'Food is not trash, it's life' where I praised Waitrose for embracing my concerns.

Alas, as suddenly as the reduced section appeared, it vanished, with nobody being able to give me an explanation as to why?

I have often felt that I am fighting like a one man army against the food corporations who have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply. However, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has decided to tackle these corporations and has declared a war on waste!

Having watched the second episode of Hugh's War On Waste, I am incandescent with rage! Morrison's had driven a family of farmers to breaking point in their demand for exacting cosmetic standards and participated in a pathetic little trial where they put some substandard squashy vegetables next to some gleaming perfect ones at the SAME PRICE. Surprise surprise, customers opted for the firmer vegetables, a Morrison's spokesman then patronisingly told Hugh that customers had 'voted with their feet.' Unfortunately, customers hadn't been told the story about Morrison's rejecting, for example, Tattersett's Farms parsnips to the tune of 20 tonnes for not meeting their cosmetic standards, nor the fact that this was standard practice which is crippling farmers across the UK.

During this televised interview, two of Morrison's bigwigs, you know the type, the ones in smart suits with smarmy smiles, the ones who destroy peoples livelihoods between sips of Perrier water from high in their ivory towers, the fat cats who never get their hands dirty but receive outrageous incomes and perks, well, two of them shamelessly made no apologies regarding their contribution to colossal food waste or the destruction of farmers livelihoods and made it very clear they look only to maximise their own and their shareholders wealth!

                        Shamefully all supermarkets are culpable regarding colossal food waste

Given that supermarkets can quite happily throw away tonnes of perfectly edible food on a daily basis and refuse to be accountable, I've come up with a game plan. Why don't we all start shoplifting rather than shopping? If the supermarkets can afford to lose so much of its produce without feeling the pinch, why not help ourselves? Better we feed ourselves with all this over supply of food than see it happlessly going to waste. I wonder what the men in suits would do if we the public started an en mass shoplifting revolution where we went in our droves and helped ourselves to food across the UK?

Hugh's war on waste is one we very desperately need to win, by whatever means necessary as far as I am concerned. We have to take responsibility as consumers to change the retailers behaviour towards both their suppliers and the contents of their rubbish bins!

'I find it very sad that by the time corporate science realises the value of nature, that it may be too late.'
- Steven Magee

'Mercilessness is not a bad trait to have in the corporate universe.'
- Soroosh Shahrivar

Love Donna xxxxxxx

Lime Wood Hotel.

                 The ravishing hotel Lime Wood, just east of Lyndhurst in the new forest

There's a running joke between Glenn and I which involves yawning and raised eyebrows on his behalf whenever I start to tell my anecdotal stories about my time at Fortnum and Mason. Admittedly, I'm rather like uncle Albert from Only Fools And Horses, who was famed for telling stories that began with the words 'During the war....,' which annoyed Del and Rodney.

When I started working at Fortnum and Mason I was a young girl earning very little money, however, that didn't stop me assuming the lifestyle. I spent nearly a months wages on a pure silk shirt from the ladies department and shortly after saved up for a Gucci handbag and a bottle of Jean Desprez Bal A Versailles parfum. A colleague and I would go to the Cavendish Hotel for vodkas and orange and canapés, I would puff my way through a packet of St Moritz menthol cigarettes, feeling very grown up and ladylike.

I suppose because I was pretty and young, I had my fair share of wealthy suitors, thus my social life was a whirlwind of dining at Claridge's and The Ivy and reveling to my hearts content at Tramp. I acquired a taste for champagne and escargot, the more garlic the better and was never phased by all the wealth and glamour, I took to it like a duck to water.

You may wonder why I'm reminiscing about those long gone days, well, I happened to spend an afternoon at the opulent Lime Wood Hotel here in Hampshire just a few days ago and I felt I had been transported back to my youth.

Lime Wood is set in 145 square miles of ancient heath and woodland where ponies, donkeys, pigs and deer roam freely. The building is a stately home that has been transformed into a stunning 5 star hotel, crossing the ground between old and new notably well. The staff, (like myself in my Fortnum days,) whilst young, are part of the fabric, well-mannered, well-spoken and totally at ease with their surroundings.

We were shown to the centre courtyard and sat amongst other customers who exuded wealth and class.

           The courtyard boasts a retractable roof which is opened up during the summer

Not since I left London have I found anywhere that compares with the luxury or glamour of its restaurants and hotels. As a restaurant reviewer, I have spent time in some wonderful eateries, but, at the risk of sounding like a snob, I am not ashamed to admit that rubbing shoulders with the extremely wealthy has a completely different feel. Nowadays, eating out is not uncommon, but enter even some of the most expensive restaurants and you will see bad etiquette, mess on the tables and floors, scruffily dressed people glued to their mobile phones, children running amok, rudeness to waiting staff.......

Lime Wood thankfully doesn't attract that sort of clientele and I can't tell you how relaxing and civilised it felt to be sat in its wonderful environment. We enjoyed a delectable afternoon tea, served by the most accommodating staff.

                                                My friend Gill waiting patiently to tuck in!

Regular readers will know of my love for Angela Hartnett (her family hail from Bardi as do mine,) well, Lime Wood is Angela's home away from London where she works alongside chef Luke Holder. Something of Angela's personality is stamped on to Lime Wood, the staff (whilst I have said are well-mannered and well-spoken) aren't stiff and starchy, in fact they all happily gathered for a group photograph and I sensed the camaraderie and fun amongst them which has to be attributed to their bosses.

                                              A perfect example of Angela's sense of fun

It's no small wonder that celebrities frequent Lime Wood, and given they could probably have picked anywhere in the world, Jamie Cullum and Sophie Dahl chose to tie the knot at Lime Wood in 2010.

The only drawback to the day was having to leave. I could have happily stayed in one of the hotels beautiful rooms and dined on one of Angela's Italian influenced forest dinners. Let's hope that when Glenn reads this post he'll know what to treat me to for Christmas!

'Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.'
- Coco Chanel

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Simply Nigella

Nigella is back on our screens with her new show 'Simply Nigella.' Unfortunately, she has been widely mocked after kicking off her latest series with, not so much a recipe, rather, a preparation of a dish she exclaimed is 'part of the fabric of my life.' The offending dish was simply a mashed avocado, dressed up with dill, salt, lime, dried chilli flakes and radish, served on toasted artisan bread.

Personally I thought it was a great introduction to 'Simply Nigella' (the clue's in the title) because let's face it how many of us do make delicious snacks like this? Ask yourself, when did you last add fresh dill and sliced radish to an avocado and pile it on seeded toast? It's all very well these yummy mummies guffawing that their four year old could make this, but I've had many a worse lunch at supposed 'foodies' homes.

It brings to mind one of my earliest cookbooks, 'Delia's How To Cook'. Book one had no less than 30 pages dedicated to eggs. Many poked fun at Delia, who on earth, they mocked, needed instruction regarding cooking eggs? Well, the popular saying: 'I can't even boil an egg' has often proven to be true in my experience and usually translates to, 'I can't cook anything at all'. We have entered a world of plenty, everything we want is available and ready-prepared, consequently, the simple act of making a soft, fluffy omelette, one of life's simplest and quickest dishes, is beyond many people, believe me, I've sampled a wide range of omelettes ranging from rubbery to crucified.

                     A perfect moist and fluffy omelette (courtesy of Delia's How To Cook)

As Delia succinctly put it in her book: 'We are in danger of losing something very precious, and that is a reverence for simple, natural ingredients and the joy and pleasure they can bring to everyday life.'

Many of the dishes which are part of the fabric of my life are simple, however, for those relying on everything to be ready-made this isn't always the case. As certain friends have pointed out: 'you know how to combine flavours' or 'you understand which ingredients compliment each other.'

Cooking is a learning curve and what should drive us is that the sensual pleasure of eating belongs to everyday life. If we can master the art of a well made, expeditiously served omelette or soft clouds of perfectly scrambled eggs (or deliciously seasoned avocado on toast) we're half way there. Cooking is about confidence, it's about experimenting, and if you want to learn to cook there's no better place to start than with eggs.

Softly scrambled eggs

Recipe
For 1 person
2 large free-range eggs
10g butter
Salt and pepper

Break eggs into a small bowl and use a fork to lightly blend the yolks into the whites

Add a good seasoning of salt and pepper
In a small pan add half of the butter and place over a medium heat, swirl the butter around so that the whole pan is covered

When the butter starts to foam, pour in the beaten eggs

Using a wooden fork or spoon, start stirring briskly, don't turn up the heat, the egg mixture must be cooked very gently
When you calculate that three quarters of the egg is now creamy and a quarter still liquid, remove the pan from the heat and add the remaining butter

Continue scrambling, the eggs will carry on cooking even when removed from the heat
As soon as there is no more liquid egg left, serve onto plates immediately with hot buttered toast

             The secret of success is removing the eggs before they become dry and flaky

Once you've mastered the art of perfect scrambled eggs you can start to experiment, for example, combining some smoked salmon trimmings and dill with scrambled eggs becomes a luxurious meal often served in top class restaurants.

'Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy, it's programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just know.'
- Sarah Dessen.

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Waste Not Want Not Campaign

Just some of the hundreds of thousands of tons of edible vegetables being left to rot in the UK every year!

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has started a campaign, Waste Not Want Not, hilighting the shocking extent to which food is wasted in the UK and is urging us all to think about what we can do to waste less.

Regular readers of this blog will know that food waste is one of my biggest bugbears and that I rant about it quite regularly. It infuriates me that supermarkets take no responsibility for the waste they cause in the supply chain and demand cosmetic standards which sees farmers ploughing tons of vegetables back into the soil or into landfills.

In a TV documentary this week, Hugh visited one such farm where the family who have been growing parsnips since the 1970s now operate at a loss due to the huge waste of produce which is being rejected by Morrison's supermarket.

I don't want to bang on about statistics such as us here in the UK we are throwing around 15 million tonnes of food and drink away a year, because clearly this is making no impression upon people. Hugh challenged a woman on the documentary who was throwing some perfectly edible ingredients into her dustbin, dictated purely by use-by dates, but she clearly saw no shame in not using common sense or having any ethics, it's all easy come-easy go and cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing!

I have recently re-read Angela's Ashes, a memoir written by Frank McCourt about his impoverished childhood in the 1930s, the same era my parents grew up in. Like McCourt, my parents often wondered where their next hot meal was coming from and often subsisted on bread and tea, McCourt's family were literally starving most of the time and resorted to stealing leftover food from the bins of restaurants at the end of the day. Fast forward a couple of generations and we're gaily chucking away a day's worth of good food every week per household.

        Children in Britain less than 100 years ago who suffered from food poverty

Many people today seem perfectly happy to ignorantly remain at the end of an industrial food chain without a care in the world about it. To assume any responsibility about what we are eating without 'professional' guidance seems unachievable nowadays, we seem incapable of smelling food or trusting our instincts, something generations before us did with notable success. Of course the food corporations and supermarkets are relying on our greed and stupidity, it would be seriously unprofitable for them if we had any nouse.

I don't even really want to bother you yet again with the horror of intensely farmed chickens, however, the fact that these creatures are subjected to such a cruel fate from birth to death and then restaurants like KFC toss a couple of million of them in the bin every year makes me feel sick to my stomach.

         Some happy chickens in my friends garden, believe it or not, they have feelings!

I would urge you to think about your contribution to waste, blitz ageing vegetables into a delicious soup, freeze meat that's approaching its use by date, grate cheese and freeze it in bags to use for cooking, sauté mushrooms over a low heat, extract all the juice then cool and freeze

 Place cooked mushrooms in freezer bags and freeze, great for instant pizza toppings

Top and tail beans, cut the strings from the sides, slice and put in freezer bags and freeze

                      Stir up older eggs, dip stale bread in the egg mixture and fry the bread

                          Delicious french toast, great smothered in strawberry jam as a treat!

There are many ways to use up ingredients past their best and I shall continue to share tips and recipes in forthcoming posts.

Please sign Hugh's  pledge at www.wastenotuk.com

And remember, next time you're hungry do the apple test: if you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry. This will make you think twice about all the unnecessary extras you buy to snack on.

'We are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.'
- Michael Pollan

Love Donna xxxxxxx