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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!