3 Recipes to Make You Fall in Love with Sustainable, Waste-Free, Awesome Cooking
On reducing food wastage in the most delicious way possible
Welcome to Simple + Straightforward, a weekly letter about living on your own terms in a simple, meaningful way. If this is your first time here, welcome! I’m so pleased to have you in this little community.
Let’s talk about food.
Back in the early days of this mailout, I wrote a story about how food is an oft-overlooked category when it comes to saving cash. The financial media might tell you to go to a discount supermarket. Spend less on ingredients, give your wallet a boost, right?
But what if you don’t want to sacrifice your health and food quality for the sake of saving a few dollars? Because let’s face it, cheap food is cheap for a reason.
For me, the problem doesn’t lie so much with the cost of the ingredients, more with the wastage. The average US household wastes 40% of food each year. That means you could be spending 40% more than you need to.
Even the best (or is that the worst) discount supermarket can’t compete with 40% savings.
But not many of us are taught how to cook, and certainly not how to cook well. My mother still thinks the height of gourmet cooking is a dried-out roast chicken on a Sunday with barely-cooked roast potatoes and over-boiled peas on the side. And I can count on two hands how many times I’ve seen my father cook.
So we’ve got a disconnect here. Lots of food is being bought and thrown because hardly any of us have a ‘chef’s mind.’ One that knows what to do with ingredients once they hit our fridge. Instead, we return to old favorites, leaving the lettuce to go brown in the crisper.
I’ve been pondering about this for years. And during those years, I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a recipe book to help with the problem. After all, I’ve been around the hospitality block a few times - I know my way around a chicken.
I want something that promotes using healthy, fresh ingredients from sustainable sources and is flexible to fit your lifestyle and food choices.
And today, you lovely lot get to be my guinea pigs.
Here are three recipes that can be adapted and built upon to suit your own taste.
Trganci pasta
I learned how to make this pasta 8 months ago when I was languishing around Croatia’s coastline and I have literally not bought pasta since.
Pronounced turr-gan-si, trganci pasta is one of those things that makes you scream HOW IS IT SO SIMPLE YET SO DELICIOUS?! It’s also super forgiving to make and cook. You don’t need to roll it out super thin or use a pasta machine, which makes it quicker and easier than 99% of fresh Italian pasta.
It takes something like 10-15 minutes to make and 2-3 minutes to boil. Plus, a bag of decent flour costs less than a packet of fancy dried or fresh pasta, so it’s cheap to boot.
125g - 200g strong white flour per 2 people, depending on how much you eat
Warm water. The amount of water should be 58-60% of the flour weight. 125g of flour would need 75ml water. 200g of flour would need 120ml water.
A dash of olive oil (around 1-1.5 tsp)
A pinch of sea salt
Put the flour and salt into a bowl.
Pour in the water and oil and mix to form a dough. Knead until soft and pliable. You don’t have to knead for long, around 2-5 minutes is fine.
Flour your work surface. Grab around half the dough and flatten it out into a thick circle on your hands. Tear off little pieces of dough, flatten them slightly and drop them on the floured surface.
Much like this:
Bring a big pot of salted water to boil.
Drop in the trganci. Don’t worry if the flour from the surface goes in, that just adds starch to the water which will thicken whatever sauce you mix in.
Boil for 2-3 minutes until the pasta still has a chew but is no longer raw. Drain, reserving some of that starchy pasta water to add to your sauce if it needs it. Mix in your sauce of choice.
The best sauces for trganci
Italian sausage, fennel, chili, and tomatoes.
Croatian goulash (slow-cooked beef in paprika and tomatoes).
Ragu.
Bacon, pea, mint, onion, garlic, and creme fraiche.
Butternut squash, ricotta, and nutmeg, loosened with plenty of that pasta water.
The Salad
The Salad was inspired by my friend’s restaurant Leroy in East London. It has three main components. A vegetable, topped by a nut, and a cheese. The dressing is either lemon or decent Sherry vinegar emulsified with good olive oil on a 1-1 ratio.
What combination you use is up to you, depending on what’s in your fridge. Here are some of my favorites:
Griddled spring onions or roasted leeks with toasted almond and shaved parmesan.
Roasted beetroot with hazelnut and soft goat’s cheese. Swap out the lemon for orange in the dressing.
Chicory with walnuts and Issau Oraty (the original Leroy salad).
Roasted carrots with hazelnuts, fennel seed, and feta.
Braised lettuce with hazelnuts and grated parmesan.
The Hot Sauce
This hot sauce is what I miss the most when I’m on the road. I’ve yet to find a better one.
It’s not fermented like Sriracha and it’s not vineger-laden like Frank’s or Tabasco. It’s fresher than that - fruity, a little bit chunky, and a jar never lasts longer than a week.
Spread it on sandwiches. Top eggs with it. Stick it on your burgers. Eat it straight out of the fricking jar with a heel of bread.
15 chilies (We generally like a mix of red, habanero, and jalapeños (more on the red side than the green) but use whatever you like/can find. I’d probably steer clear of Thai chilies like Birds Eye
8 garlic cloves
½ onion
⅓ carrot, peeled
½ cup / 120ml water
¾ cup / 175ml distilled white vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp hot smoked paprika
You’ll also need a clean, sterilized jam jar.
Finely chop the vegetables. You may want to use a glove while chopping the chilies. Depending on how spicy your chilies are you may want to remove some of the seeds but this is after all supposed to be a hot sauce so don’t wimp out too much. It may seem pointless finely chopping everything at this stage when you’re going to blitz it later but believe me, you’ll end up with a better texture.
Put all the ingredients in a pan, bring to the boil then turn down to a simmer for about 30 minutes.
Leave to cool slightly and zip it with a stick blender until it is smoothish, but still with a bit of texture.
If it’s a bit too thin, pop it back on the hob for a bit longer.
Taste and adjust salt or sugar if required.
Store in a sterilized jar in the fridge.
Stuff I’ve done this week to get more organized
At the beginning of the week, I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I’d forgotten my niece’s birthday, I had a list of life admin that stretched to infinity and I’d forgotten half the ideas I had for future Medium posts.
Maybe you can relate.
Here’s what I did to try and regain control of my diary (and my life).
Started to bullet journal again. I love bullet journaling but somehow I always forget to do it. Using the method properly this week has made my life so much simpler. If you don’t know bullet journaling, you can read about it here.
Started a shared calendar with my husband for our travels. Yeah I know, I’m probably behind the curve on this shared calendar malarky but man, it makes planning the future soooo much easier.
Organized and deleted many of the notes on my phone. Because no one needs a shopping list from 2019.
Something to read
3 articles from my back collection:
The Best Thing on the Internet Is Still Tim Urban’s ‘Wait but Why’
The Restaurant Industry Is Full of Fame-Hungry Chefs, Snooty Sommeliers, and Rip-off Food, Right?
“Strive to Have the Luxury of Choice” Is the Best Piece of Money Advice You’ll Hear Today
The best articles I’ve read this week
You Don’t Have To Be What The Internet Wants You To Be - Felicia C. Sullivan
Choose a Life of Stories - Niklas Göke
A Child? In This Economy? - Kate Cohen
Like last week, these are all Medium articles and again, that’s because I believe Medium is still the best place for indie writers on the internet.
If you’re not a member (but want to be), you can sign up via my referral link for full access to my work, any thousands of other incredible writers for $5 a month.
Happy cooking!
Charlie