Hard - Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, Stems, and Other Odds and Ends into 80 Scrumptious, Surprising Recipes

To Mike,

my partner in life and love, and my favorite person to cook for.

Contents

Clean out the Crisper

Tempura

Clean out the Crisper

strata

Clean out the Crisper

Quick Pickles

Clean out the Crisper

Salts

Clean out the Crisper

Sugars

Clean out the Crisper

Frittatas

nuts

Clean out the Crisper

Stocks & Broths

Clean out the Crisper

Infused Alcohols

Clean out the Crisper

Infused Vinegars

Pickled Vegetables

Avocado Pasta with a Crunchy Cilantro Stem Sprinkle

Watermelon RindLime Granita with Basil Whipped Cream

Hello there!

I dont think there are any perfect recipes.

If you find this to be a disconcerting beginning to a cookbook, a book that by name is made up entirely of recipes, bear with me.

There are many, many recipes that are so good, theyre incredibly popular or have stood the test of time (or both!): Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimis Basic Hummus (from Jerusalem), the Plum Torte that Marian Burros made famous (published regularly in the New York Times), and Marcella Hazans Tomato Sauce (from her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking), just to name a few.

When I say that no recipes are perfect, I mean in the sense that they are not immutabletheres no recipe that is above tweaking. From Ottolenghi and Tamimi, Ive learned that cooking the soaked chickpeas for a short period of time with baking soda allows them to puree smoother than I ever thought possible, making this hummus an invaluable addition to my cooking repertoire, and the inspiration for my Ive always hated that the onion is discarded after cooking, so I blend it right in.

All of this is to say that while recipes may well be very good, or even pretty much perfect, just as they are written, that doesnt mean they are beyond messing with, tweaking, and adapting to your preferences. They arent. And you should. Thats why Ill remind you to taste and adjust seasonings at every turnsometimes we can forget that a touch more salt or an additional squeeze of lemon is all it takes to really make a dish sing. And for most of the recipes within these pages I give you suggestions for just how to play around with them, because while Ive written these recipes to be perfect just as they are, that doesnt mean that they will be for you. I sincerely hope you take the ideas within these pages and make them your own.

To that end, because recipes arent created in a vacuumwe all draw inspiration from those around usIve tried to note who influenced me in the headnotes of recipes whenever possible. I want to express my gratitude for their formative ideas and recipes and I want to make sure youre introduced to them as well, in case you want to check out more of what theyre doing.

Lets back up for a minute to tell you a little bit more about who I am and why I wrote this book.

One of my very favorite picture books from childhood was The Boy Who Ate Flowers . If you havent read this 1960 classic by Nancy Sherman, the title pretty much sums it up. Peter, the boy, begins to tire of eating oatmeal and he goes in search of new culinary experiences... in his mothers flower garden. Unfazed that everyone thinks Peter has lost his mind, I delighted in the fact that Peter had found a tasty, underappreciated food sourcemade even better with the eventual help of a French flower chef.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and I was putting my masters degree in urban planning to use in a quasi-governmental office job. At the time, Ann Arbor, Michigan, didnt have single-stream recycling (a system in which all recyclables are commingled instead of sorted), and was only processing # and # plasticseverything else was simply thrown away. I was aghast and created new signs for the recycle bins in our office building, instructing everyone to recycle all plastics# through #. I then regularly collected all of that recycling, along with my personal stash of plastic, and carted it with me across the state every time I visited my parents so that they could add it to their single-stream recycling bin. While they appreciated my tree-hugging inclinations, they, and their overflowing bins, were pleased when my city finally adopted single-stream recycling, too.

Move forward a couple more years: I was living in Japan, learning to cook vegetables Id never seen or heard of before that showed up in our farm share box. I was also introduced to two important concepts: mottainai and hara hachi bu , both of which deeply resonated with me. Mottainai is a word that expresses regret regarding wastefulness. In some ways, its not all that different from the English expression waste not, want not, but to me it manages to somehow not only capture the shame of wasting a precious resource, but also hold onto the gratitude for what a gift (food, time, money, etc.) it was in the first place. Hara hachi bu , an important part of the traditional Okinawan approach to eating, is a phrase that means eat until youre percent full. In theory thats pretty self-explanatory; in practice I think of it as eating just enough to no longer feel hungry. Its that point where you could keep eating, but maybe dont need tothis way, youre not overindulging and youre giving your brain time to fully process whether youre full before you overdo it.

These three seemingly unrelated life stories actually tell you a lot about me and the origins of this book: I love a good challenge, I hate to see unnecessary waste, and I believe its important to be conscious of our consumptionof food and beyond. These characteristics set the stage for my love of cooking with scraps.

What Is Cooking with Scraps?

M aking the most of your food scraps is a mainstream topic today, and while Im delighted by the resurgence in enthusiasm for reducing food waste, its by no means a new topic. People throughout the ages, across lands and cultures, are no strangers to making the most out of what they havethink using chicken bones for stock and stale bread for strata. In 1942 , M.F.K. Fisher wrote How to Cook a Wolf and inspired readers to cook economically but creatively so as to not feel constrained by wartime shortages. Tamar Adler and Eugenia Bone have tackled kitchen frugality in cookbooks, discussing how using all of an ingredient throughout its lifecycle will not only save you money but will make your food taste better, too. And more recently, chef Dan Barber has popularized kitchen scraps through the Michelin starworthy meals at his pop-up, wastED.