All taste no waste vegies

There’s more to do with veggie peels, bones and stale bread instead of throwing them away or composting them.

Wellington chef and restaurateur Max Gordy is inspiring people to use every last bit of our groceries with his zero-waste philosophy.

He has already delivered a sold-out zero-waste veggies workshop for Wellington On A Plate.

Gordy told Nine to Noon the event showed guest how to use parts of vegetables that don’t get used often.

With the growing pace of society, people often wanted quick food and lacked time or knowledge to turn around their leftovers, he says.

"When you’re looking for something to do at a dinner party, you just need one recipe, you’re not thinking about all the different bits you’re going to have off cuts from.

"I think when I first started cooking I was throwing away broccoli stalks and onion stems and all that stuff. Nowadays I’m like ‘what was I doing? There’s so much flavour’.

"You see a lot of people using other bits and parts of the vegetable and it just made sense to me, why add to the landfill or compost heap that’s already overfilling when you can just put it in your mouth and eat it?

"I think the best part about working this way is that at the end of the night you don’t have to empty the bin, because there’s nothing in it, it’s a great feeling."

He admits that some cuts may require more effort - like kohlrabi stems or fibrous roots - and people needed to weigh up whether composting it would be better.

"I find with a lot of the parts that we’ll usually throw out, like cauliflower stalks or the outer leaves of brussels sprouts, there’s a lot more fibre in them so they need a bit more TLC, maybe a little more finely chopped.

"You can still use it, it’s just there’s more energy to make it useable than its worth.

"I think a lot of the times when you think about no-waste you have to think about what kind of energy is required to make it ‘no waste’."

Gordy is also getting ready to open his own restaurant called Graze in Kelburn.

How to use leftovers

Often people thought of making croutons from leftover bread, but did you know it was possible to make ice cream too? Gordy says you can soak the bread in milk to get a yeasty starchiness, combine that with some eggs to make an englaze, and freeze it.

Alternatively, you can make a miso rice dish with bread, by mixing it with koji rice and leaving it for three or four months to ferment.

For fennel tops, Gordy suggests massaging the green stalks with salt to break down the fibre and then folding them with some yoghurt to make a tzatziki.

Potato peels are versatile, he says. You can roast them with oil in the oven and serve as is or put them in a soup for a roasted vegetable broth.

“It’s got that potato taste to it without actually having the body of the potato-like smoothness so it kind of plays a little mind game on people.

“You can also puree them because there’s a natural starch in there … I pureed it then dehydrated it like a little cracker and then deep fried it and it puffed with all the natural starch.

“It kind of blew people’s minds.”

Gordy finds use for nearly everything in his kitchen, even onion skins.

“What you can actually do is roast those onions whole with the skins and everything and take those cores out and make a nice roasted vegetable broth from that. Then with all the skins you can use that to flavour vinaigrette or whatever.

“So you can chop all your skins up pretty finely and blend it up, and it’s just going to add a nice roasted burnt flavour, which really matches a lot of bittersweet vegetables. Like we paired that with a buttered cabbage, and it was just super fantastic.”

When making sauerkraut, Gordy finely chops the cabbage core and saves the leaves to help submerge it underneath the juice so that it can ferment safely, without needing to add a plate on top.

He’s also got another way to use cabbage leaves: “For the All Taste, No Waste event, I took them off and chopped out the thick core bit and blanched that in water to make it really quite palatable.

“Then just wrap that with some buttered leeks and some rice, split peas, and just made a little parcel and steamed that.

“It was a beautiful presentation because you had this bright green leaf on the plate and you could just cut through it like a little steak.”

Leek tops can be finely chopped, massaged with a bit of salt, and add a bit of vinegar to get a relish-y accompaniment.

“You can also make it into those nice green flavoured oils which chefs loving putting on plates, which kind of makes it pop.

“That’s just about using the chlorophyll that’s in the vegetable and kind of putting it through to the oil and that’s just blending it at high heat with a stick blender and you get that nice green oil.”

And it’s not just vegetables that Gordy finds use for. He makes a sauce with fish guts, by salting them and leaves them a certain temperature for a few months to ferment.

“It’s one of those things where a home baker could go ‘let’s get really creative today and try this process which is a little bit difficult’.

“But if you leave it on top of your washing machine or dryer which is a little bit warmer all the time and just have a jar of fermented fish guts, that you have to stir every couple of days and in three or four months’ time you’ve got this lovely condiment.”