Waste Not...Want Not?

I recently watched the BBC’s documentary, the “Great British Waste Menu”...it followed four well known chefs (Angela Hartnett, Richard Corrigan, Matt Tebbutt and Simon Rimmer) as they explored how and why the UK throws away and reject huge quantities of perfectly edible food. The chefs were then set a unique and seemingly impossible task: to create a fabulous banquet for over 60 guests from ingredients that have been discarded, rejected or deemed unsuitable for sale, in an attempt to change the way Britons think about waste food.

It’s been reported that the average British family wastes around £700 worth of food a year, and restaurants, supermarkets and farms are even worse culprits, chucking out prime cuts of beef and gallons of fresh milk. Supermarkets have gotten so fussy about what food looks like that an obscene amount of perfectly good fruit, vegetables and eggs are thrown away, fed to pigs or ploughed straight back into the soil before they even leave the farm.

This carrot would never have made the grade, but it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the Toy Story character...

'Buzz Lightyear' grown in a veggie patch in Henley-on-Thames

(Photo found here)

The chefs came up with a menu fit for a feast, using only supermarket items that were coming up to their 'sell by date' or had damaged packaging; bruised, wrinkly or misshapen veg and fruit; oddments of fish, and cuts of meat that were simply 'out of fashion ' to eat (things like heart, pigs trotters, etc) and thus destined for the bin or animal feed.

- Great British Waste Menu -

Beef consommé with tongue and summer vegetables

Stuffed sole parcels with pig’s trotter ‘ratatouille’

Floating island with strawberry coulis and summer fruit

Personally, I'm not a fan of offal, and I'm not about to start tucking into liver and onions or tripe....no thanks! But I am quite conscious of not buying too much fresh food at any one time, planning meals to reduce waste, and I also give a bit of leeway on those 'recommended best-before-dates' as often the food is still perfectly fit to eat.

I'm not convinced the BBC's documentary will make a huge difference to the public's attitude to food wastage - more importantly, much more needs doing to convince the all powerful supermarkets to change their ridiculous standards of food appearance, and the way they dispose of food deemed unfit to sell. Surely more could be given to soup kitchens and other charities, to ensure that no one goes hungry?

In the spirit of this programme, I'm going to share with you a really simple recipe for delicious banana cake, that can be made from bananas that are well past their prime. I'm a pretty rubbish baker on the whole but I've had great success with this recipe....

4 oz (115 g) butter or margarine
6 oz (170 g) sugar
8 oz (230 g) self raising flour
2 eggs
2 large or 3 medium, very ripe bananas

Heat the oven to 180C (350F).
Grease a 2 lb (0.5 kg) loaf tin.
Mash the bananas with a sturdy fork.
Cream the butter and sugar together and mix in the eggs.
Mix together the two yellow sludges you now have.
Mix in the flour.
Scrape into the loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes then lower the temperature to 150C (300F) and cook for a further 30 minutes.
Leave to cool (turned out on a rack) before you devour it.