Elliott-Howery Alex - Cornersmith salads & pickles vegetables with more taste & less waste

MAKE VEGETABLES THE HERO OF YOUR PLATE

The Cornersmith way to eat is about bringing together a variety of deliciously simple elements. Make one or two vegetable dishes, open a jar of pickles or ferments, add a good loaf of bread and perhaps an easy protein a great piece of cheese, some eggs, a slice of grilled meat or fish. No diets, no superfoods, no guilt... Just good food with more taste and the added benefit of cutting down food waste.

From the award-winning Cornersmith cafes and Picklery comes the follow-up to their bestselling self-titled cookbook, with a focus on seasonal salads, pickles and preserving. Including dozens of simple ideas for fresh ingredients that might otherwise be thrown away, Cornersmith: Salads & Pickles is your handbook to putting vegetables at the centre of the way you eat.

Alex Elliott-Howery is the co-founder of what has become a thriving and boundary-breaking food community in inner Sydney. She runs the Cornersmith cafes, renowned for their big heart and strong conscience when it comes to sustainably sourced food. Alex teaches pickling and preserving workshops at the Cornersmith cooking school, the Picklery. She and her team of picklers, fermenters, cheesemakers, bread bakers and others have taught many hundreds of classes over the years.

Sabine Spindler , known as the waste warrior, is head chef and chief salad creator at the Cornersmith cafes. Her experience working in fine dining restaurants in Europe left her shocked by the amount of good food that goes to waste on a daily basis in the hospitality industry.

THIS BOOK IS AN EXTENSION OF OUR SHARED LOVE OF VEGETABLES, AS WELL AS A BIT OF A ROADMAP FOR WHERE WE THINK THE FUTURE OF FOOD NEEDS TO HEAD MORE VEGETABLES, LESS MEAT; MORE COOKING FROM SCRATCH; LESS WASTE, MORE PRESERVING; MORE SHARING AND COMMUNITY BUILDING.
ALEX ELLIOTT-HOWERY

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

When we started out back in 2011, our neighbourhood cafe was a little shop with a big heart and a strong conscience when it came to sustainably sourced food. We could never have imagined how quickly Cornersmith would be embraced by the local community, and how so many customers would connect with what we were trying to do.

Cornersmith now consists of two cafes in Sydney one in Marrickville and a newer venue in Annandale as well as a Picklery, where we make our preserves, run our busy cooking school and sell preserving supplies. We have taught many hundreds of classes in pickling, fermenting, cheesemaking, bread baking and more over the years.

We think part of the reason Cornersmith has been embraced by so many is because we combine really delicious food with a solid commitment to good food choices. From the start we were determined that our food would be full of flavour, good for the person eating it and good for the planet. Nothing about this philosophy has changed as weve grown.

We only use seasonal produce; we support local small-scale producers who we admire; were obsessive about preserving foods and reducing food waste; we only use small amounts of ethically raised meats and true free-range eggs; and were committed to our community and food education.

But we dont expect people to love us unless the food tastes great. And it does in no small part because of our brilliant head chef, Sabine Spindler, who shares our vision and beliefs and makes the best-tasting food weve ever eaten!

When I first met Sabine, I knew it would be an exciting food adventure if we put our heads together. We come from very different backgrounds, but we have a shared obsession with delicious food, food education and reducing food waste.

I had spent the previous 10 years cooking for my family, devouring wholefoods cookbooks and reading everything I could get my hands on about the issues in our current food system. I decided to teach myself how to cook everything from scratch as a way of being less reliant on supermarkets and more connected to what I was buying and feeding my young family.

I became interested in ways to reduce food waste on a domestic level, teaching myself how to preserve as a way of dealing with excess fruit and vegetables. I bottled home-grown vegetables, made jams from neighbours unloved fruit trees, and pickled what was left over in the fridge at the end of the week.

Sabine had trained as a chef in her home country Germany, and worked in fine-dining restaurants all over Europe. The food she learnt to cook was always focused on seasonal produce, which gave her an early appreciation of the work that farmers, producers and growers do. But she was shocked by how much food was wasted on a daily basis in these top restaurants. Chefs have the skills to make use of every part of the plant or the animal, but were still encouraged to throw out large quantities of perfectly good produce.

Sabine grew up with two grandmothers who had lived through wartime rationing, when preserving and avoiding waste was a matter of survival. They impressed upon her the importance of using everything you have and not wasting a morsel.

This book is an extension of our shared love of vegetables, as well as a bit of a roadmap for where we think the future of food needs to head more vegetables, less meat; more cooking from scratch; less waste, more preserving; more sharing and community building.

Weve chosen to make a cookbook about salads and pickles because we think it best represents the way we eat, and because these are the two reasons people keep coming back to eat with us. Were known for our love of vegetables and the way we make them taste so good so good, in fact, that theyre the hero on our plates.

We want to encourage people to really understand the seasons, and we hope this book helps you to navigate seasonal eating; we want you to think about where your produce is coming from and who youre supporting when you purchase your groceries.

We want you to question what a meal needs to look like. The way we eat at Cornersmith is about assembling a variety of delicious elements. We make one or two interesting vegetable dishes, open a jar of pickles or ferments, add a nice loaf of bread and then a small simple protein a lovely piece of cheese, some boiled eggs, a grilled piece of fish or meat.

While a lot of thought and planning goes into our menus, we are not interested in tricked-up faddy food no diets, no superfoods, no guilt. Cornersmith is about simple, tasty meals, made from scratch with care.

Pickling and preserving is what were known for. We pickle not just because we love the taste, but because pickling is an important food tradition that needs to be understood and passed down the generations. Preserving makes you understand the seasons, helps you to know whats going into your food, and avoid unnecessary preservatives and packaging. It also massively reduces food waste. On top of all of that its good fun!