Welcome and thank you for joining.
The Surplus Food Studio Newsletter is a weekly newsletter to make your home cooking better and easier. Yup. Cooking at home does not have to be a chore.
To those who don’t know me, long story short:
I am a zero-waste plant-based chef, who spent the past 10+ years working in restaurants across the world, from bistros to Michelin stars, and from England to Cambodia. I have opened my own restaurant - vegan, zero-waste (surprise surprise) - closed it, and proceeded to never stop talking about food waste and plant food. I have published my first book last year, sold more copies than I would’ve ever imagined and went on to do a bunch of speaking, presenting and consulting about food waste problems.
And now I am here. Bringing all I know a little closer to your home kitchen and letting out all the secrets from restaurant kitchens. While I am all about the zero-waste cooking and vegetables, don’t expect this to be a simple tip+recipe kind of a thing. I will dive into the ‘why’ of the cooking, give you detailed recipes and most importantly, I will answer all of your questions.
So think about this as an ongoing ‘course’ with the addition of my stories, opinions, thoughts and anything that is related to food, cooking and eating. I might even share some untold stories from my restaurant in Cambodia. Or… anything that will be relevant. We will figure this out together. Your feedback is always welcome.
Heads up: I was told that my writing style is very direct/blunt/honest, so keep this in mind. No bad intentions here, just telling the raw facts as they are.
Okay, that’s it for the intro. On to our inaugural newsletter!
The ultimate solution to your food waste…
…is to eat all the food that you have at home. Period. Bang. That’s it. End of story.
Well, actually it’s the beginning of the story.
‘Eat the food that you buy’ is a simple advice. Would it be so easy, we won’t have those ridiculous amounts of food waste created by households around the world. So, obviously, it’s not that easy.
The hardest part in the whole thing is that we somehow always have more food than we need. Unless, of course, you are living in a country suffering from famine or you can’t afford food. (In which case please reach out and I will do my best to help.)
Having just enough food at home would be the answer here, but that is a mission impossible. Even for me. There is no way that I can calculate the right amounts of food I will need for a week. Not happening. But it’s not a problem if you create a couple of habits around shopping and cooking. To present this in a simple manner, here is a short list of my tips:
Always write a shopping list before you go to the shop. No exceptions here.
Stock up on long shelf-life and dry items. Don’t go crazy though.
Cook in batches. It saves time. Lots of time.
Make the most of your freezer. Almost everything can be frozen.
This is how I do it:
I go shopping once a week, and then I top up on fresh items as I need. Fresh items = bread, veg, fruit. Most of the vegetables last a week though. Before I go to the shop, I figure out what I want to cook the following week. No menu = no plan = no shopping. Planning = preparation. And preparation is 80% of the job.
This is something that you will hear a lot from me. Think before doing. It takes no more than 20 minutes to figure out what to cook and to look into the fridge and cupboards to check what you need to buy. Those 20 minutes are well invested as this planning will save you more time down the road.
(Do you have two dishes on your mind? Great, write them down and start building a list of dishes that you can then choose from. When a dish that you like to cook comes to your mind, put it on that list. Once you have a list of like 20-30 dishes, the planning part will become even easier.)
So I come up with two dishes that I can cook in batch and will last me for at least three days, sometimes more. Yes, refrigerated cooked food is perfectly fine even on the fourth day.
I always have some staple ingredients at home, plus some leftover veggies and random stuff in my fridge or freezer, so on the rest of the days until the weekly shopping is up, I whip up some quick meals that take less than 30 minutes. In those meals, I use up whatever needs to be used, or I top up on some veggies if I have to. Rinse and repeat.
The long shelf-life items
I always keep some pasta, rice, lentils, cashews, a tin of chickpeas etc. at home. Those are my go-to things when I have ‘nothing’ to cook. You don’t need to worry about them that they will go bad and I think that even the smallest kitchen can hold a package of pasta and a tin of beans.
Whenever I take the last package, I add it to my shopping list. In fact, I start writing my shopping list a few days before I go to the shop, as I like to make sure that I am not going to forget anything. I use notes on my phone for this, as I always have my phone somewhere close. (And my handwriting sucks, so…)
Cooking in batches
…is the ultimate cooking hack. Not every food is suitable for batch cooking, but stews or soups do really well. As I prefer to spend time with my son rather than cooking twice a day, every day, I always cook food in batches. If I happen to cook more than I am willing to eat for four days in a row, I put the rest in the freezer.
Freezer is my best friend
It should be yours too. I feel like frozen food has been demonized, but the truth is that freezing is the best option for food preservation. My freezer is always packed with random stuff such as bits of vegetables, bread, vegetable stock, frozen fruit, leftover soups, or any random stuff. I think I have an open can of sweetcorn there right now. Yup, it’s there. And it will probably go into tomorrow’s stir fry.
See, it’s easy once you get a grip of it. Food in the bin = money in the bin. Money in the bin = time wasted making that money. Throwing food away is a habit that became the norm for many. Don’t be one of them.
Until next time.
Vojtech