FoodCycle

Bananas Holocaust!

2010-08-15T17:18:00.014+01:00

One rainy Saturday afternoon, I was walking home via Berwick Street market in Soho where there is a small street market. Berwick Street is blessed with a good number of quirky, funky and interesting shops and eat places. My favourite is the Cloth Shop which sells a funky, "not playing it safe" selection of fabrics frequented by fashion students and crafty fashionistas alike. All this is surrounded by the "oldest profession" at work and other questionable video shops ...

Picture the scene: the market day was drawing to a close. Most traders have already packed up and left. Only a few remain. What was left to shift were made up into £1 bowls of fruit and veg. Someone had a lot of really not too great avocados to get rid off cheaply. Hmmm ... I wasn't in the mood for guacamole. Then the skies opened. I dashed to one side towards the shops to get out of the rain. I then found myself standing right across the street from another vendor who was getting absolutely soaked and was yelling at the top of his voice announcing that bowls of bananas (there were a lot in each bowl and they weren't too bad) were now reduced to 50p per bowl.

"It would cost me more to trash these!" he yelled.

This, it struck me, was Bananas Holocaust, to borrow a term coined by our Dear Leader (Kelvin, hee hee). Perfectly fine to eat bananas being wasted en masse is not good!! So below is what I got for 50p:

Banana Bread on a production scale

Since last Autumn, I have been making banana bread from a Sophie Dahl recipe found in Waitrose Illustrated magazine (which I can get for free because I hold a John Lewis card (which I never use for buying stuff. I just use it to get this magazine for free, ha ha)). It is a really forgiving recipe as one can make lots of substitutions and the end result is, invariably, very good.

Accordingly, this is a very useful recipe for FoodCycle for when we get a glut of bananas.

The basic list of ingredients is as follows:

110ml Sunflower oil
200g Light muscovado sugar
2 Eggs
75 Desiccated coconut
400g Mashed banana (about 4 medium bananas without their skin)
200ml Creme fraiche
1 tsp Vanilla extract
170g Spelt flour
1tsp Bicarbonate of soda
half tsp Salt

Well, I decided to make double the quantities and made a few substitutions in order to use up ingredients I already had:

220ml Sunflower oil
400g Light muscovado sugar/demerrera sugar mix (more demerrera than muscovado)
4 eggs
150g Desiccated coconut, 30g of which was made up with almonds (chopped in the blender). It should be okay to subs with some chopped apricots, dried fruit, sultanas, other chopped nuts or chocolate chunks
800g Bananas
400ml Soured cream (170ml) the rest made up with coconut cream thinned with some soya milk. I like soured cream because it reacts with the baking powder (below) to help raise the cake mixture. For a vegan version, I guess you can use only coconut cream thinned with water or soya milk
2 tsp Vanilla extract
340g plain flour with the end bit of a bag of semolina flour thrown in. You can also add some ground cinnamon and ground ginger if you like them. I forgot to put them in ....
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda and 1tsp of baking powder
half tsp Salt
(optional: grated zest of a couple of limes can be added to the cake mixture. I forgot as well ....)

Start by getting your ingredients ready. If you are, like me, conscious of energy use, it is fine to leave preheating the oven to a bit later. The original instruction in Sophie Dahl's recipe tells you to preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.

In an electric blender, blend together the vegetable oil and sugar.

Break the eggs into the blender bowl and blend on high continuously until the mixture is even. Put the desiccated coconut and chopped almonds into a large mixing bowl. Add the oil/sugar/eggs mixture to it.

Roughly blend the bananas in the blender in two lots. Then add the mashed bananas to the contents of the mixing bowl.

Make up the soured cream, coconut cream and soya milk mixture in the blender. At this point, I turned on the oven but if you are more conscious than I am about energy use, leave this until 2 steps later.

Add the blended cream mixture to the contents of the mixing bowl. Stir everything and mix thoroughly. Then sift in the flour. Add salt, baking powder and bicarb.

As I had used a bit of semolina, this was left behind in the sift. No matter. It was just chucked into the cake mixture at the end of sifting. The mixture was then thoroughly mixed using a balloon whisk.

In terms of cake tins, I decided to use some aluminium food trays (like the ones from Chinese takeaways) and paper cake cases which I bought from a pound shop. It was an inexpensive and effective solution. A paper case was placed inside each aluminium tray. This saved me having to grease the trays. The cake mixture was then ladled into each paper case to about 4 fifths full (not too full in case the baked cake spilled out).

The filled trays were then baked at 180C for an hour on the top shelf of my fan assisted electric oven. The original recipe states 50 mins but since I cooked double quantities, I gave things an extra 10 mins.

Next installment: lime zest, coconut cream and cream cheese frosting

The Times They Are A Changin'

2010-04-25T21:12:00.005+01:00

The new project leaders Izzie, Andi and Boncica were running the cooking session with volunteers Louise, Lauren and Sarah. This is their menu,

~~~

Main Courses

~~~

Spicy Stew

Roast Beetroot and Potatoes

Gratin

Stir-Fry Thingy

~~~

Dessert

~~~

Apple Crumble

Awesome work!

LSE cooking Feb 22 Shepherd's Pie... with lentils!

2010-02-22T10:30:00.006Z

LSE cooked up a great meal this weekend at Holy Cross Community Centre, on the menu was

Shepherd's pie... made with lentils, onions and mushrooms to give it a good texture and taste. This was inspired from a couple weeks ago, when LSE did a lasagna with lentils, which was a big hit with the group we were serving. It was reported that almost everyone was enjoying the food that night, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but when it's 50 people with varied tastes, also it being meat free, well, that's a big accomplishment!
Root veg soup with potatoes, parnsips and carrots.
and bread pudding to finish things off for those with a sweet tooth.

That's the pie up top there!

We were joined this weekend by two special guests, brothers Paul and Mark Cheng, who have been supporters of FoodCycle since the beginning and came to lend a hand with the cooking and seeing what all the hype was about.

Paul got right into things, as you can see in this picture, and let's hope they enjoyed they enjoyed the food!

Good work guys, see ya next time!

31/01/2010 Imperial College cooking session

2010-02-07T11:05:00.003Z

This week's ingredients came from Marylebone Farmers' Market and consisted of a seasonal variety of freshest cabbages and root vegetables. Cooking according to the seasons is an important aspect of FoodCycle, as is the best use of any collected ingredients i.e. from supermarkets where seasonality might not be as prominent an issue. Having a repertoire of generic cooking techniques suitable for production scale cooking and the knowledge and creativity to apply the techniques to whatever ingredients we get and transform them into tasty, nutritious and amazing dishes is an art indeed. The point is, nowadays people are rather indoctrinated into following fixed recipes and have lost the ability and confidence to conjure, adapt and create dishes.

Sometimes we are also indoctrinated into thinking that good food HAS to be expensive, made with rare and costly ingredients. That is so untrue!! A bit of magic lies in transforming a few bits and pieces, especially if they are just unexceptional pieces of cabbages, carrots, etc into a truly magnificent dish say a rich gratin with a little cream, garlic and seasoning.

Here we have some leafy cabbages with chunky, crunchy stalks. Sometimes the stalks may be a bit too chunky in comparison to the leaves which may result in the leaves becoming overcooked and soggy before the stalks are cooked. One good way of overcoming this is to split and slice the stalks, whether leaving some on the leaves and/or cutting chunky bits of stalks out and slicing them separately. The stalks are nutritious and well worth keeping!

More variety of cabbages: pointed white cabbage and green curly kale. The white cabbage was sliced and where one got to the chunky core, some of the core is cut out and sliced thinly to ensure that they cook down well. As for the curly kale, the green chunky leaves were picked off the fibrous stalks and washed. The stalks themselves were just too fibrous and hard for eating and were "recycled" for composting.

As our beneficiaries are fond of aromatic, starchy dishes, potatoes and other root vegetables were par-boiled, seasoned with herb and spice mixes which we devise each week according to what was available from our dry store boxes and then tossed in oil for roasting in the oven.

Patrick made a fresh tomato sauce with over-ripen tomatoes which were given to us and crumbled some goats cheese into it.

Some fresh rosemary which were added to the roasted potato wedges.

Collected vegetable cuttings for the compost bin. We are happy to be able to minimise our landfill waste!

A tasty, well seasoned braised cabbage dish with added chunks of swede.

Patrick's tomato sauce was added into a big vat of spaghetti.

Giving the elderly happiness and joy in their later years

2010-02-04T14:05:00.004Z

Gingko house is a social enterprise restaurant in Hong Kong.

What's so special? It's a French restaurant run by seniors!

Gingko house gives seniors that are looking for a more meaningful life in retirement than just chilling out. The retiring age is quite young in Hong Kong, which means that seniors are looking for things to do, and want to something to do that requires responsibility and meaning.

Wait, seniors retire, why would they want to go back to work?! One of the stories that was moving was about one of the staff that after several years of retirement fell into the deep slump. He was depressed and struggled to find meaning in life. He was close to committing suicide, when he saw on the news about Gingko house and what they did. He went down to apply right away and is now part of the staff. The daily interaction with customers, the new challenges and the friends that he has made means now that he is much happier and now he has something to look forward to everyday.

Gingko house provides this kind of support for seniors. The wait staff were very nice, having a fine attention to detail (they probably came to fill up our water 5 times!), and very generous with the wine! The food was good, moderately priced, and the whole ambiance of the little place was great. I had a cream soup starter, and a sea food tagliatelle.

They have 3 locations in Hong Kong. You can visit them at http://www.gingkohouse.org/.

Friends of ours in Hong Kong

2010-02-04T13:41:00.005Z

So Kelvin was in Hong Kong visiting the parents and doing some FoodCycle related stuff as well last week, and met with various groups in Hong Kong that do similar things to what we do in the UK. This is to be expected of course, with the amount of food waste in richer countries... and food prices rising, citizens are taking matters to their own hands!

One organisation is the Love Food Save Earth project in Tai Wo, which is in the new terrorities in Hong Kong. They collect food from the local 'wet' market, which means open market in local terms, and bring it back to the community centre to cook for those that are unemployed, or just on low income. They charge about £1 per meal... all you can eat, and 6 dishes. As you can see, they were quite delicious!

We chatted about our experiences, difficulties and how to overcome them. For them, just like us, unfortunately, it is the amount of food that they get. 400 kilos in one day, and now that the vendors know about them, and the project has been featured on TV, even more food is saved for them and well, they just don't know what to do with it all!

There are other project going on as well, such as the http://www.foodlinkfoundation.org which takes surplus food from hotels as well.

One of the issues is the scalability of the projects. It works well in one area, but how to scale it in a sustainable way to other communities as well. There is a hidden and unreported layer of poverty in Hong Kong and recent reports say Hong Kong throws out 3,000 tonnes of food each day... that's not all good, but I'm sure about 1000 tonnes must be... do the math... a kilo of food per person per meal, that's food for 1 million people... I know the math is not all there, but it is still a lot of people give or take 25%!?!

Hopefully the projects in Hong Kong can work together to tackle these big problems. FoodCycle in the UK will do their best to support them from the UK.

17/01/2010 Imperial College cooking session

2010-01-21T10:34:00.003Z

Once again we are grateful for the generosity of Abel & Cole who donated several boxes of produce containing great variety. Look at the colours!

In particular, there were lots of citrus fruits which came in handy for a fruit salad. We also had in stock several bottles of homemade lemon syrup given to us by Ruth in Stoke Newington. The lemon syrup formed the liquid base of the fruit salad.

Lots of apples and bananas!

Green veggies (savoy cabbage, broccoli, white cabbage and leeks) and mushrooms formed a braised vegetables dish. Braising is a technique which is half sauté (stir-fry) and half stewing. This technique is particularly useful for our dishes because braised dishes reheat well, and our dishes are normally served to beneficiaries the following day. The veggies were lightly sautéed first (with a little garlic, if desired) over medium high heat to achieve aroma and browning, then seasoning (salt, pepper and if desired, some form of alcohol like white wine or vermouth) and water (and stock, if using) are added and the heat turned to low for the veggies to stew gently for about half an hour. The stewing process gets the flavours going in both the veggies and the sauce!

Joyce doing a great job prepping carrots :)

I made the fruit salad - check out the kiwi fruits!! We were given some candied dates by Abel & Cole and I removed the stones, chopped them up and used them in the fruit salad (kind of in place of glacé cherries oh errrrr) to add sweetness. The juice of 2 limes were also added to the lemon syrup base to enhance tartness.

Joyce and Ivy made a fresh salad with the salad leaves which came in the boxes to which was added alfafa sprouts and sliced avocadoes.

Roasted root vegetables - a favourite dish!

Braised cabbage, broccoli, leeks and mushrooms.

10/01/2010 Imperial College cooking session

2010-01-16T21:06:00.006Z

First cooking session for the Imperial group in 2010! Lots of us turned up and the work was, consequently, much lighter.

For the first time, the produce was donated entirely by Abel & Cole with whom we have embarked upon a fantastic and mutually beneficial relationship. We received a dozen boxes of produce for this session which were orders which could not be delivered to some of Abel & Cole's customers because of the adverse weather conditions that weekend.

There were large quantities of top quality organic fruit and veg. We counted bananas, pink grapefruits, apples, onions, celery, red and green peppers, courgettes, aubergines, butternut squash, beetroots, fennel bulbs, garlic bulbs, mushrooms, tomatoes, savoy cabbages, carrots, turnips, potatoes and something unusual which we thought could have been burdock roots! Such a variety of produce from these Abel & Cole boxes was truly impressive.

Hannah made a giant pot of ratatouille using the courgettes, aubergines, celery, fennel, peppers and onions to which she added tomato purée.

Donat supervised a baked hashed potatoes dish which was flavoured with fresh rosemary that was brought in by Hannah (and which she picked from a bush from a place near her house) and salt and pepper.

I devised a nutty, roasted root vegetables dish using a nut paste to coat the sliced butternut squash, turnips and carrots. The nut paste was made from gently heating jars of pecan nut butter, chopped fresh garlic and onions, sesame oil and soya sauce (for savory flavour) - all these we had in our larder box and it was good that they were used up. The warm nut paste was then added to the vegetables, mixed and coated thoroughly and the vegetables baked/roasted in the oven for 40 mins until cooked.

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough baking vessels to use on this occasion otherwise Ludo and I had in mind a baked bananas dish for dessert. As it turned out, we decided to give the bananas fresh to the refugee centre as a fresh fruit dessert.

All in all, it was another successful weekend cooking yummy food and adding value to the community. Fantastic!

15/11/09 Imperial College cook session

2009-11-16T18:25:00.004Z

It was only a flying visit for me this Sunday in order to take pictures for the blog as well as help with washing up towards the end of the session.

Since the autumn arrived, the types of seasonal produce donated/collected have been consistent: carvolo nero, kale, potatoes, leeks and chard (the red stemmed ones are particularly pretty). This week we had 2 bags of fresh flat leaf parsley too, and some "otherwise would have gone to waste" very ripe pomodorino tomatoes.

We were pleased to have been joined by two guest corporate volunteers at this cooking session, whose valuable help and extra pairs of hands enabled us to finish cooking by 6.15pm (instead of 7pm).

Dishes we made:

(1) A cooked potato and chopped chard dish highlighted with ripped up mozzarella cheese (donated) and jars of flavoursome organic "sugo ai funghi" (tomato sauce with Italian mushrooms, also donated). The finished produce was topped with more flavoursome gruyere cheese donated by Whole Foods.

(2) With 6 eggs, some of the cooked potatoes, gruyere cheese, sautéed chopped leeks and some seasoning, what was originally an odd assortment of ingredients because a tasty spanish omlette (just how versatile is this dish!).

(3) Not forgetting, of course, the ever popular well seasoned baked potato wedges :o) skins still on for extra fibre and vitamins!

(4) East meets West - shredded carvolo nero and curly kale stir fried in teriyaki sauce with ginger and garlic. Thanks Chef Shun!

01/11/09 Imperial College cooking session

2009-11-08T13:21:00.006Z

This week we were given a lot of carvollo nero (in season!!), curly kale in both green and ****wait for it**** purple (very rare), broccoli, swiss chard (with lovely sweet, red stalks so prized by celebrity chefs), applies and a selection of goats cheese.

The swiss chard, broccoli and some of the carvollo nero and curly kale were made into a quick sauté vegetables dish with plenty of minced garlic and mushroom stock for extra flavour.

The rest of the veg was then added to mashed potatoes into which the goats cheese was also mashed in (lots of intense savoury flavours)!

Ivy and Joyce then made apple and oats cookies using the donated apples. The cookies were to feature at a Big Challenge event on Wednesday 4 November. We used donated flour, sugar, syrup and some oats from our larder box. Funky purple silicone baking sheets are author's own :)

And here we go again... FoodWorks 2.0

2009-11-03T16:40:00.005Z

Here we go. One year ago, there was an idea. That idea has now grown up and had kids... a lot of kids.

On October the 30th and 31st, project leaders from LSE, SOAS, Imperial, Devon and St. Hildas got together for an intense 2 day training session consisting of:

Teambuilding training by the Centre of High Performance Development with Kieran and Matt,
Cooking with Imperial veteran team
Marketing with Amy Birchall
Fundraising with Tory
... and volunteering management, which we didn't have time for...

Special thanks to all those involved, the project leaders for coming... Amy, Kieran, Matt, Tory, Jessica, Verity, Louise, Hoxton Apprentice and St. Hildas for loaning us their space!

The event was a blast... a tiring blast. Unlike a year ago, when we were just like... here's the idea, make it happen, now we have a training weekend, volunteer manuals, solid connections with stakeholders and EXPERIENCE... we're using all that we've learn to start things much quicker, and hopefully overcoming the various challenges much more quickly....

Here's to the successful of FoodWorks in 2009-2010!

25/10/09 Imperial College cooking session

2009-10-26T16:53:00.007Z

This week's donations were fewer - not that it was a problem - because the market we collected from was busier than usual. (We are, of course, very happy for our trader donors/supporters that trade was good!!) A good selection of vegetables were collected which included: potatoes (way hey!), savoy cabbages, carrots (the really tasty, smaller and slimer variety with their green tops still on), leeks, a cauliflower, aubergines, mizuna lettuce, romaine lettuce and cooking apples.

As the weather cools down and autumn arrives, we get given more root vegetables e.g. potatoes, turnips etc. Potato wedges are easy to make and a populer crowd pleaser, particular when an imaginative range of spices is used to vary the recipe each time we make it. This week, our chief potato wedges chef is Lindsay, who used a variety of dried mediterranean herbs (oregano, basil and sage) as well as some Korean chilli powder (which is quite mild and much mellower than standard chilli powder). She was careful to parboil the potatoes beforehand as well as "shake" them up a bit once boiled to create a fluffy outside on the wedges so that when they were roasted, the outside became very crispy and tasty.

We now compost our offcuts and peelings!! Thanks to Donat's and Ankoor's networking, our group is now able to take compostable waste to a compost heap located on campus which is run by another Imperial College group. This reduces our group's landfill waste significantly and we are really happy.

In addition to crispy potato wedges, we also made a pasta dish with most of the vegetables which we sautéed with tomato puree and lots of minced garlic. We had a lot of rice pasta in our larder box which we used up. However, we noticed that rice pasta is a lot softer than hard durum wheat pasta when cooked and breaks more easily. This really didn't affect the taste of the dish, though.

Finally, Ashley rolled out some ready made puff pastry to make a pastry case for a large apple flan. We made it more or less like how we did it last week but with extra ground cinnamon and without the pecan nut paste and sultanas. Instead, we added lots of fat free syrup donated by one of our supporter organic food shop chains.

18/10/09 Imperial College cooking session

2009-10-22T20:45:00.004+01:00

This session was all about improvisation using a repertoire of generic cooking techniques and applying same to donated ingredients. We collected: carrots, parsnips, pointed cabbage, broccoli and purple sprout broccoli, carvollo nero cabbage, potatoes, cooking apples and spring onions. We made the best of what was available without following a fixed recipe - this aspect is special to FoodWorks cooking because we get what vegetable donations we are given. Creativity and technique application are crucial so that we make really tasty and nutritious dishes for our beneficiaries because we care.

The carrots, parsnips and potatoes were cut into chunks and wedges, blanched and then roasted with seasoning (salt and pepper), cumin and various dried herbs we had in our larder box.

The rest of the vegetables, except the cooking apples, were quickly sautéed and made into a vegetable curry by Ankoor who spiced the dish personally using individual dried spices i.e. not using a pre-packaged spice mix. This is authentic home style Asian cooking and something very special!

Finally, the cooking apples were made into a dessert dish by first tossing apple wedges in sugar, some white wine vinegar and dried sultanas. This was then roasted off quickly for about 10 minutes in a very hot oven, after which big dollops of pecan nut paste were mixed into the hot apple wedges. The vinegar (in place of lemon juice, which we didn't have on the day) helped the sugar to dissolve as well as caramelise the apples wedges. The pecan nut paste added a nutty flavour to the dish.

As our beneficiaries are from central Africa mostly, we are currently exploring what their food ways are back home so that we can adapt our techniques to produce dishes which would appeal more to them. It would seem that central Africa food (www.congocookbook.com) feature often peanuts, tomatoes, yams and palm oil. (Palm oil is high in cholestrol which is not ideal so we would prefer to substitute sunflower oil and such like) So that's something we are looking into right now.

11/10/09 Imperial College cooking session

2009-10-12T10:24:00.005+01:00

Yay! We are now back cooking at the Imperial College Student Union's kitchen.

Again, we are humbled by the generosity of the traders at Islington organic market. Large quantities of the otherwise very expensive and classy carvollo nero (a chard like vegetable much prized by Italians and celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver) were donated along with curly kale, spinach, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and other herbs.

Guess what? Yeah, potatoes!!! We love 'em. We made baked crispy wedges (with the skin still on for better fibre content) with generous seasoning of salt, pepper, dried herbs (oregano, basil etc) tossed with vegetable oil.

The vegetables were made into a pasta dish using dried pasta we already had in our stores and which were previously donated by generous shopkeepers. We used a well known brand of pasta made with good quality hard durum wheat which meant when the pasta is boiled and cooked, it retains its firmness (al dente) and bite which is important because we don't want them to become soft and soggy when the vegetables sauce is mixed in.

A quick tomato sauce was made using the donated cheery tomatoes by slicing them in halves, adding some roughly crushed garlic and roasting them quickly in the oven (at the bottom and beneath the racks where the trays containing potato wedges were being cooked). The roasted tomatoes were then sieved to make the sauce. To this, tomato puree, red pesto and red pepper puree were added (the latter 2 items were donated by my next door neighbour as she moved flat yesterday and had items to clear out from her kitchen - no good food wasted).

Finally, the sliced carvollo nero and assorted sliced greens were sautéed and the tomato sauce added. This was then mixed in with the cooked pasta, seasoned with salt and pepper and finished off with a sprinkling of granted cheese (also donated by my next door neighbour).

More good food, folks!!

10/10/09 Stand at a Camden Good Food Day event - Seedy Saturday and Food Swap event to Somers Town Community Centre

2009-10-12T10:03:00.005+01:00

Attended aforesaid event as a FoodWorks volunteer and exhibitor and met members from likeminded groups such as Love Food Hate Waste. I managed to knock up some banana and coconut bread the day before the event using ingredients I already had at home in my kitchen cupboards: notably, using up some dessicated coconut, light brown muscavado sugar, self-raising flour and bananas (it was a big £1 bowl I got from a place in Borough/Bermondsey). Only extra ingredient to buy were eggs. So said banana and coconut bread can be seen in one of the pictures above, put out as a freebie sample :o) Well, there was no waste of this as the event drew to a close, another exhibitor's daughter asked to take the leftovers home for her tea!

07/10/09 Gift of kitchen utensils!

2009-10-07T15:51:00.003+01:00

Hearty thanks to Chris and his girlfriend @ Freecycle who passed on their surplus kitchen utensils to help FoodWorks make more good food while helping the planet to reduce waste! It is much, much appreciated. Thank you.

Also, I will be at the Good Food for Camden event this Saturday 10th October as a FoodWorks participant. Pics will be posted after the event!

Sunday 20/09/09 at Imperial College

2009-09-24T10:58:00.013+01:00

Again, we only had limited kitchen facilities for this session but fear not, the creative, resourceful juice at FoodWorks floweth as ever. Generous quantities of potatoes, corn, plums, various soft herbs (basil and coriander), watercress, curly kale, red and yellow stemmed chard, romaine lettuce, mixed baby leaf salad etc were donated by big-hearted stallholders at Marylebone market. Check out the explosion of colours in the pictures!

Ankoor led the session. We were joined by new FoodWorks co-ordinator, Verity, whose pictures can be seen above. Volunteers present were Sarah et moi :0)

Sarah made baked potato wedges flavoured with cumin seeds. Ankoor made an Indian style potato and cabbage dish which made the best use of all the veg and herbs we had. The cabbage was sautéed with boiled potatoes with spices, then generously seasoned and the contents of a small jar of orange red Peruvian chilli sauce (donated item we had in stock). Then chopped fresh herbs were added and mixed into the dish. The result was truly magnificent, no less a stunning transformation of an otherwise mish mash of ingredients. FoodWorks magic?

Because of limited kitchen facilities, we were unable to cook the plums (might have made a baked flan using puff pastry); so we sorted and cleaned them and delivered them as fresh to the Notre Dame Centre.

Both plums and sweetcorn are in season now. Check them out at your local market!

Sunday 13/09/09 at Imperial College

2009-09-19T21:59:00.006+01:00

This was our first session back at Imperial College after the summer break. Ankoor and Donat led the session. We were given generous quantities of curley kale (a leafy green rich in vitamin C), cauliflowers, sweetcorn still in their husks, potatoes and organic pears (not shown). Our normal kitchen at Imperial was not ready for use on the day and so we had to think on our feet and come up with another plan! Alternative facilities were found, although the limited resources available there meant Donat had to revise the cooking plan considerably.

We produced: corn on the cob (boiled and seasoned simply with salt, pepper and some Korean red chilli powder), curley kale sautée with cumin seeds, cauliflower florets stir-fried with sliced onions, cumin seeds, ground cloves and other spices and baked potato wedges with the skin still on which also had a sprinkling of the afore-mentioned Korean chilli powder.

New Partnerships

2009-08-26T14:50:00.002+01:00

September 2009 is a new academic year and yields new partnerships for FoodWorks @ LSE. Operating out of the awesome Fleet River Bakery at Holborn (www.fleetriverbakery.com) for the past 5 months, we are going to move cooking location to The Holy Cross Trust Centre over by Kings Cross (www.hcct.org.uk).

It's sad to leave Fleet River Bakery, it was such a wonderful relationship, and we especially enjoyed their Magic Mixer! However, our new kitchen is great as well, and once we recruit a new leadership team in September and October, we look forward to continuing supplying food to The Choir with No Name!

We've been busy!

2009-08-24T16:37:00.002+01:00

Since our operations began 5 months ago, we have put over 2000 meals on the plates of those who needed them. We could not have done any of this without something to cook and someone to cook it! We would like to thank the Farmers, their staff and local businesses. They willingly and generously donate their goods and produce each week. We would also like to thank our volunteers of course! They have put in so much hard work, and helped us go through a fair few teething problems without raising as much as an eyebrow.

All this beeing said, we need to take a break. The Notre Dame Refugee Center and the Choir With No Name are taking breaks, so we have ambushed this opportunity for some R&R. We will be back though, on the 13th of September, ready as ever to fill some tummys!

Stay tuned,

Donat

Cooking sessions

2009-08-03T14:10:00.002+01:00

Last week was my first session in the Fleet River Bakery and to be honest it was my first full cooking session with Foodworks. Food was gathered from the Islington farmers market, I have to say thank you very much to the farmers who are donating food, excellent people. Food was prepared and cooked; turned into 120 appetising, nutritious meals over a 5 hour session. Thanks again to all the volunteers, fellow project managers and of course to Kelvin and the Head Office Team. And finally, meals were delivered to people who need it, thanks Donat for cycling that day.

I have no photos of our achievements from last week but it was no small feat we pulled off and I think everybody’s feet were aching after we finished. We were tired but to be honest it felt good at the end of the day. Yesterday was very much the same except a little more rushed but still a little more efficient so we are getting better each week.

The menu this week included an excellent frittata, which was an improvisation on the Kelvin Spanish Omellete... which was basically Kelvin getting bored and adding some flour and pesto in to see how it would turn out and Marcella putting it together with style.

also.,

veggie salad
broad bean salad
potato wedges
stir fry
fruit salad

Cherries flap jacks

2009-07-19T22:51:00.004+01:00

Another blog about what we made on 12 July.

Cherries. Lots of cherries! What to do with them?

Flapjacks are easy to make: mixing rolled oats, melted butter, honey and sugar together. Bake at 190C for 20 mins. The technique is straightforward and can be varied by adding fruits (fresh or dried) and/or nuts. Ah! Technique. A repertoire of culinary techniques is crucial to the successful transformation of our collected ingredients into desirable, tasty products. Flapjacks are also handy as a big batch could be made easily in one large tray in fairly little time. The end result was a visual triumph too! The fresh cherries and rolled oats glistened in the butter and honey which they were coated with.

A handful of spuds

2009-07-18T12:48:00.009+01:00

Zoe looking her most glamorous mashing potatoes!

This was a spontaneous recipe on Sunday 12 July. We were given lots of young potatoes by the market traders. Now, with such young potatoes, there was no need to peel them (this also preserved the most nutrients); just scrubbed hard to remove soil and dirt was all that was necessary. Besides, we had to be mindful of the time and resources available to us: so many potatoes, so little time and not enough potato peelers to go round ha ha ha!! (More thoughts on this later)

The potatoes were boiled and then mashed. Then came the creative bit: adding butter, oil, some milk (whatever we had to hand really) and lots of seasoning. A big block of medium aged, fairly savoury cheese was also collected that day so this was grated into the mash. Then we also happened to have had donated fresh mint as well as a small packet of dried dill (from our larder box) which were added to the mash. The combined fragrance of these herbs transformed the dish into something unique and special just for that occasion. More special still as the transformation created value collectively to the otherwise mish-mash of surplus ingredients. So there was no waste, and more good food!

Uniquely, our project needs to balance our use of time, resources and space each time we cook. Therefore labour intensive dishes aren't really do-able, nor are recipes which need extensive cooking times and/or involved techniques. We sometimes just have to think out of the box and be creative with conventional recipes and adapt them to work within our constraints and still make them taste great, which is all the more creative, challenging and rewarding. So it does mean minimising peeling which, in any case, is better for nutrition as vegetable skins contain a lot of vitamins.

We also made a fresh coleslaw on Sunday 12 July using donated cabbages, carrots and beetroot. To this was added donated fresh coriander and the aforementioned dried dill from our larder box. The fragrance of the fresh coriander and dried dill was very special too (I love herbs). Once mixed with some fresh lemon juice the coleslaw was a special one-off to behold: full of vitamins, healthy fibre and a visually gorgeous palette of colours.

If ......

2009-07-18T00:07:00.005+01:00

If gastronomy means the intuitive, intelligent and creative use of what raw materials are at one's disposal, no matter how humble, then the art of eating well can be the prerogative of the poor as well as the well-heeled.

(Adapted quote from Derek Cooper, who used to edit the Good Food magazine in the early 90s and original version appears in the foreword to Bernadine Lawrence's 1987 book "How to feed your family for £4.00 a day")

In picture - broccoli and runner beans stir fried with sesame oil, oyster sauce and toasted sesame seeds. All vegetables used in this dish were donated by traders in Islington market on Sunday 12 July 09, skilfully wok stir fried over high heat in batches by Tymon from Lodz, Poland. Respect!

Fleet River Bakery :)

2009-07-14T16:28:00.003+01:00

Here you can find the link to 'Fleet River Bakery' which is located next to LSE campus and is hosting our cooking sessions the last 2 months :) Many thanks!!! Lets reward them for their contribution by telling our friends about it! They serve delicious gourmet dishes, and their sandwiches are yummy too (judging from personal experience!) Why not enjoy a cup of coffee along with a piece of cake at our favourite, charity-friendly bakery?

http://www.fleetriverbakery.com/

We got new funding... £75500 to be precise.

2009-07-14T10:50:00.000+01:00

We hit the jackpot!

After 6 months of waiting, we have received our first major grant for the continuation of FoodWorks projects in the UK.

The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation gave us £75000 for salaries and project costs over 2.5 years.

Thanks to all the volunteers for their hard work on the pilot projects with the results to show the funders that FoodWorks is an innovative and dynamic project that has the huge potential to expand in the future.

Check mark for the first big grant, now onwards to the next one!

We are going to take a small break on the weekend of the 24th to 25th to celebrate by having a picnic for all our volunteers and friends in Hyde Park. We'll let you know more next week about the time and place!