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Zero-Waste Chef

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Posted on October 10, 2016by The Zero-Waste Chef
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Things My Daughter Eats as a Busy Student
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Sourdough Measurements by the Cup (or Why I Use a Kitchen Scale...)
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I hit the Sunnyvale farmers’ market on Saturday I hit the Sunnyvale farmers’ market on Saturday to buy my two 20-pound cases of tomatoes from @tomaterofarm. @siliconvalleysunrise was also there to encourage residents to vote for a better future. . I roasted 20 pounds of the tomatoes and fermented another 10 pounds. I made a small amount of broth out of the cores I’d saved from those 30 pounds. I used that for a batch of incredible white bean and tomato soup last night. At the very end, I threw in cubes of stale garlicky sourdough focaccia to sop up the juicy tomato broth (and avoid wasting the focaccia). The soup tasted incredible! I’m going to need more tomatoes this weekend... Below is the recipe (roughly). . 🍅 Sauté a large chopped onion and a couple of cloves of minced garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat until softened. 🍅 Stir in a teaspoon or so of dry or fresh herbs. I used dried thyme. (I cook with lots of thyme and rosemary.) 🍅 Stir in 2 pounds of fresh tomatoes, chopped. Break them up with the back of a wooden spoon. Cook for about 5 minutes. 🍅 Add 1 1/2 cup dried white beans that you’ve soaked overnight, drained and rinsed. 🍅 Cover everything by a few inches with water or broth or a combination. Add a teaspoon of salt. 🍅 Simmer beans vigorously for an hour, stirring occasionally, until tender. 🍅 Stir in a tablespoon of vinegar (I used kombucha I’ve fermented to the point of vinegar). 🍅 Add cubes of stale bread if you have any. 🍅 Add more salt to taste if necessary. . If you decide to make a large batch so you can freeze some now and enjoy it later, remove what you’ll stash away before adding the bread to the simmering pot. . I hope everyone’s week is off to a good start!
During Covid, I haven't been going to the farmers' During Covid, I haven't been going to the farmers' market religiously like I usually do. But this Saturday, I plan on buying two 20-pound cases of Early Girl dry farmed tomatoes to prep so we will have tomatoes during the winter. The price plummets this time of year, in the early fall before the rains start (if the rains start this year). . I think I'll try making some tomato soup in my crock pot with a few pounds and ferment another few pounds (so good!). I'll roast the rest to use in place of canned tomatoes and transform some of those roasted tomatoes into tomato paste. I'll spend most of the weekend washing, cutting, fermenting, roasting and cooking tomatoes but one weekend of work will be worth it come January. . Link in profile for tomato recipes.
If you accidentally put all of your active sourdou If you accidentally put all of your active sourdough starter into a recipe but have some discard in the refrigerator, you can revive that and not have to start your starter all over. . My daughter Charlotte left behind this jar of discard (left) when she moved to Montreal last month for school 😭 This discard has been sitting in the refrigerator without any new food for at least a couple of months and tastes incredibly sour—too sour to bake with. So I am perking it up. (It had a layer of grey liquid on top when I started this process but I poured that off. You can stir this hooch in if you prefer.) . I took out a spoonful of the old discard and fed that 50 grams each flour and water. I did these feedings three times, about 8 hours apart, before the starter began to behave normally again (right jar). I’ve added the discard from these feedings back to the discard jar. Now that discard tastes less sour and I’ll make some crackers with it. I also have new active starter for baking something else, probably more focaccia. . I keep my starter small to prevent discard from taking over my kitchen. But I do get nervous when I get low on it. If anything happens to my active starter Eleanor, I can clone her with the sourdough discard insurance policy stashed away in the refrigerator. She is 6 1/2 years old now. That’s still young in starter years (which are much shorter than dog years) but I’ve grown very attached to her and she is never allowed to move out. 😭😭😭
"It's the marketer's job to make you unhappy." . I "It's the marketer's job to make you unhappy." . I read this years ago and I'm not sure who said it (if you do know, please tell me). I've repeated this line so many times that it now induces instant eye rolls from my children (but I think it did rub off on them both). How can you sell happy, satisfied people more stuff? You tell them they are missing out. You show them images of unattainable lifestyles. You make them feel insecure. Then you sell them the supposed solutions for their insecurities. Something to think about this #primeday.
Ordinarily, I dislike labels but I'm pretty excite Ordinarily, I dislike labels but I'm pretty excited about this one. I used wheat paste to label this jar of flour with the “label” cut out of a paper flour bag (we can't buy flour in bulk during Covid). I also made some paper tape out of the flour bag for a parcel. Link in profile for the blog post with more info.
These had been very sad, past-their-prime green on These had been very sad, past-their-prime green onions, many of which had been cut back to the white parts. Now they look fabulous with lots of new growth. . What have you regrown from scraps and how did it go?
In interviews and on social media, people often as In interviews and on social media, people often ask me about eco-anxiety—is it real (yes) and do I have advice for dealing with it (also yes). . Put down the phone (yes, I’m saying it from my phone) and pick up a book. . Right now, I’m reading All We Can Save, edited by @ayanaeliza and @drkwilkinson. This anthology of essays from women leading on climate—and making progress—will inspire you. Rather than feeling doomed, you’ll want to roll up your sleeves and get to work. You can also host a reading circle to discuss the book in small groups. Community must play a role in addressing the climate crisis and a circle is the perfect way to engage your people. Go to @allwecansave for more info on circles or allwecansave.earth/circles.
The farm my daughter MK works on in Ontario grows The farm my daughter MK works on in Ontario grows lots of squash. MK has been cooking whole squash in her Instapot in minutes. (My simple, stove-top pressure cooker also takes only a few minutes.) She made pie filling with one of the squash and says she prefers it to pumpkin pie filling 😮 . If you’ll celebrate Thanksgiving next week in Canada with your friends and family—or drop off food for them because you can’t be together—you can get a head start this week on some of the cooking: bread for stuffing, broth for a number of items, fermented vegetables or chutney, pumpkin purée and more. Link in profile for the recipes. . The holidays will be much different this year. Will you see your family? Stay home? Zoom your feast?
I made more sourdough focaccia yesterday. A couple I made more sourdough focaccia yesterday. A couple of you asked for a crumb shot on Friday so here is one of the latest bake. This has a very silky, chewy texture and the garlic cloves baking in the olive oil on top taste absolutely incredible. The previous post in my feed includes the details on how I make this. It's essentially the sourdough bread recipe with some adjustments—including fewer tools, not much in the way of shaping, no scoring and a lower temperature of 425°F.
Sourdough foccacia with olives, garlic cloves and Sourdough foccacia with olives, garlic cloves and shallots . If you find sourdough bread intimidating, you might want to start your sourdough adventures with focaccia. It is simpler to make and requires only very basic equipment—no banneton basket, no Dutch oven and no lame for scoring because you don’t score this. (Although your tummy certainly scores if you make it, and your family scores if you make it for them...) . For this, I followed the same proportions of flour, water and starter as I use to make sourdough bread but I used 100 percent all-purpose flour instead of mostly whole-wheat, and I added 1 tablespoon each olive oil and honey. (The honey from our neighbor’s hives is about as local as it gets. To veganize, try brown rice syrup.) I cut the bread recipe in half for one focaccia which I now regret because this tastes really, really good. OMG. . After the usual bulk fermentation (a little shorter because the white flour seems to go faster and also because we are experiencing another heat wave), I folded the dough onto itself (left side to middle, right side to middle, then repeat top to bottom), added a tablespoon of olive oil to a 9” x 13” baking pan, put the dough in seam side down and did a cold proof overnight. If you aren’t vegan, you may want to butter the pan first because the dough can really stick to it. . This morning, the dough hadn’t risen that much, so I let it sit out for almost two hours to puff up (it gets “jiggly” at that point), poured on one more tablespoon of olive oil, rubbed that around (like we were at the beach...), made dimples with my fingers and filled those dimples with Kalamata olives, garlic cloves (I halved some of the larger ones) and a small amount of shallots. I sprinkled the top with coarse salt. Focaccia is great for using up random veg and herbs you have on hand. . I don’t have a recipe for this on my blog, but you can start with the bread recipe there and make the changes I’ve written here. Don’t freak out when you make the wet dough. It comes together during the bulk fermentation. And wet your hands when you work the dough. It makes a huge difference. . Link in profile for the bread recipe you adapt for this.
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