Waste not, want not: The Thrifty Kitchen

Many people who would baulk at the idea of shredding a $50 note at the end of each week don’t think twice about throwing out the equivalent amount in unused, soggy vegetables each week.

Wasted food is just one side-effect of a society that is becoming increasingly disconnected from the idea of seasonal food and thrifty kitchen practices, such as using up leftovers rather than throwing them out.

Lack of time and lack of cooking knowledge are often blamed for the increased reliance on packaged or takeaway food. But a new cookbook, The Thrifty Kitchen, by Suzanne Gibbs and Kate Gibbs, aims to inspire people to eat more healthily and cheaply at home.

Kate says the global financial crisis has helped focus people’s minds on their expenditure and be more careful with their money, and this was part of the inspiration for the cookbook.

“This is a book that needed to be done,” she says. “An enormous amount of money is being wasted by people not being strategic and planning their meals. People need to think about their food as if it’s similar to a business and not buy food if they’re not going to use it.”

The Thrifty Kitchen contains plenty of useful tips on how to shop thriftily, including how to get the best value at the supermarket, how to get your money’s worth when buying meat, and essential items to keep in the pantry.

As well as chapters on work lunches and weeknight meals that are cheaper, healthier and more delicious than takeaway, sections of the book are devoted to meals that can be made from leftovers and weekend meals to cook and keep, allowing even the busiest people to plan ahead.

“A lot of us know how to do this but we can all improve in the way we do it,” says Kate. “Be forward thinking in terms of the meals you and your family want to eat. Make a double quantity of spaghetti bolognaise and freeze some so you don’t need to get takeaway. If you cook a roast chicken for two people, you can put the leftovers in sandwiches or make a lovely pasta dish with some cream.”

While cooking your own food gives you ultimate control over what you put in your body, it is also much cheaper to cook for yourself, and using up leftovers helps reduce waste and lessens the impact on the environment. But Kate says it is important that cooking is realistically integrated into people’s day-to-day lives and the book shows people ways that they can best use their time to fit cooking into their life.

“We’ve given lots of useful advice along with the recipes, including some clever ways to be thrifty in the kitchen. We believe cooking is connecting with food. It’s about knowing what you eat and knowing how to develop and incorporate variety into your diet.”

Kate comes from a fine food pedigree: her grandmother is the doyenne of Australian cooking, Margaret Fulton OAM, and her mother, Suzanne Gibbs, is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef who published her first cookbook at 24.

Food was integral to Kate’s childhood. She and her sister would often awake to delicious cooking smells wafting from the kitchen. Over breakfast , they would plan meals for the weekend and Kate says she always wanted to be involved in the cooking.

“We’d have family days where we would go to the fish market, buy mussels and come home and make Provencal soup. It was a lovely family event. You don’t need to spend a lot of money going out somewhere – you can just all get together and cook.”

Talking to Kate, recipes flow freely throughout the conversation. While pondering the answer to a question about her favourite recipe in the book, she digresses into a quick list of ingredients to make ricotta pancakes for breakfast.

“Food plays a massive part in my life. I choose my friends around how much they like cooking!” she laughs. “I’m lucky with my food background but, even if someone doesn’t grow up like that, you can still becoming engaged with food.

“When you love food, you’re not prepared to settle for second best.”

The Thrifty Kitchen is published by Lantern, Penguin Books, $49.95

Sojourn in Sydney

After Melbourne's cold start to spring (winter coats and flannelette sheets still a necessity), Sydney's balmy sunshine acts like a tonic. Layers are shed and upper arms exposed. Colourful spring outfits beckon from shops along Oxford St, Paddington, and credit cards are just begging to be used.

The occasion is a girls' weekend in Sydney and several girlfriends and I have flown up from Melbourne to spend time with some friends who are now Sydney-based. First stop is a fortifying sandwich at a little streetside cafe on Oxford St, where I spy a piccolo latte for $3 on the coffee menu. I first heard the term "piccolo latte" two weeks ago when a colleague from my Sydney office mentioned it was his drink of choice. Suddenly I'm seeing the term everywhere (although I've yet to order one; it sounds similar to a macchiato. Can anyone offer me more information?)

Letting six women loose along Oxford St makes for an interesting few hours (one person is heard to mutter something about "herding cats") but we manage to loosely stay together and not do too much damage to the credit cards. We freshen up at home and then it's time for cocktails at Blue Sydney at The Wharf at Woolloomooloo. The dark-toned bar is cavernous, with strategically placed low tables, comfortable couches and screens, and old hardware from the days when it was a working wharf is still visible. The cocktail menu is extensive and makes a choice difficult, so we settle for a mixture of sangria, champagne and mojitos. When the bill arrives, we also make the acquaintance of the $12 "service charge", which is applied for "table service" (although this seems a misnomer to me, as customers are steered gently but firmly to tables and I did not see a general bar where drinkers could prop). Perhaps, like the $50 main, this is a Sydney trend that is yet to filter down to Melbourne?

Dinner is at The Pier Restaurant in Rose Bay. It is a delightful setting, with a long, narrow dining room boxed with glass windows on both sides, offering beautiful views over the Harbour. Everyone chooses plump Coffin Bay oysters for entree, which are perfectly sublime with a squeeze of lemon juice. Yellowfin tuna, barramundi and John Dory and some of the options for mains. Most of the table opts for roasted barramundi, although yellowfin tuna also gets a vote. The barramundi's crispy skin contrasts nicely with the soft flesh and is complemented by sweet roasted carrots. Side dishes of salad and divinely creamy mash are wonderful accompaniments.

Although I'm normally a sweet tooth, the four options on the dessert menu leave me cold, especially at $28 per dessert. We order another bottle of Dixons Creek chardonnay and continue our reminiscing about the direction our lives have taken since we graduated from university. We take it in turns to ask the table a question (about joys, achievements and regrets). One question makes everyone think hard. What single possession would you choose to save from your house? Husbands and children are ruled out, as they are not possessions, and it is assumed that you are wearing precious engagement and wedding rings and don't need to save them. To stop everyone from giving the same answer, photos are also deemed inadmissible.

After thinking hard, my choice is my collection of cookbooks and recipe clippings collected over nearly 20 years. It would actually be very difficult to save all of these from a burning house (I would probably need a trailer or trolley to do so!) but, hey, it was a theoretical question. Some of my favourite books, such as The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander and recent titles by Maggie Beer, Gordon Ramsay, Frank Camorra, Bill Granger, Donna Hay, Jamie Oliver and Belinda Jeffrey are all still in print and available, so they could be left behind. But what about my precious scrapbook of recipes clipped from The Age's Epicure section since the early 1990s? Irreplaceable. Epicure once ran a "My Favourite Chocolate Cake" section and I diligently clipped each recipe and snapped up the book version, 50 Fabulous Chocolate Cakes when it was published by Anne O'Donovan in 1995. I can still picture myself in the bookstore in Rathdowne St buying the book, which came with a Gabriel Gate desserts book as a bonus (Not all the chocolate cakes that featured in the newspaper made it to the book, so it was worth my diligence!)

Other cookbooks to go into the save pile are a mixture of the sentimental and the no-longer-available: the metricated version of The Margaret Fulton Cookbook (the first cookbook I was given when I left home); The Cookery The Australian Way (third edition) (which I used in my year eight home economics class); my hand-written recipe book that was a Christmas present in early high school (only my absolutely favourite recipes were ever transcribed in here, but perhaps I would prefer to forget that the first risotto recipe I was given used long-grain rice!); Margaret Fulton's Book of Chocolate Cooking (picked up for $2 from an op shop in the late 1980s and the recipes and photography have stood the test of time); Irish Soups & Breads and the Kilkenny Cookbook (both mementoes from a trip to Ireland a few years ago), the RuffArtz little black book of coffee and cake (an absolute treasure trove of good old-fashioned cakes and slices from country cooks, collected to raise royalties for a small volunteer arts organisation in Ruffy in north-eastern Victoria); my mum's original copy of The Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book (it contains some of my favourite childhood birthday cakes, which did not make it into the updated edition that I have); and my personally autographed copy of Jill Dupleix's Old Food.

Just like my old friends, these books have stood the test of time and have so much more meaning to me than just a collection of ingredients and methods. As I look at the books, I recall where I bought them, why I bought them and what I made from them. I don't know why some cookbooks occupy a more precious place in our lives than others but I like to think that sometimes it's the memories, as much as the recipes, that is the special glue that bonds me to these cookbooks.

Pressure cooking

One of the cooking utensils that Adam brought into our relationship (along with a fabulous set of excellent chef's knives) was a pressure cooker. It's a lovely modern cooker, with a low-pressure and high-pressure gauge, not at all like my mother's old stainless steel pot with its jangly little bell. It used to whistle on the stove, rocking around with the pressure of the steam, and my sisters and I were always fearful it would blow up. Mum usually used the pressure cooker for corned silverside and not much else, so I don't have many recipes for pressure cookers and Adam and I really haven't used it much.

But a recently released cookbook has inspired me to pull out the pressure cooker, dust it off and give it a try. The Pressure Cooker Recipe Book by Suzanne Gibbs features more than 80 recipes, many of them a surprise to me. Of course a pressure cooker is a logical choice for braises and casseroles, turning a long slow-cooked casserole that would normally take several hours into a quick weeknight meal that can be whipped up within 20 minutes or so. But Suzanne includes recipes for nibbles such as hummus and lentil tapenade, terrine, stocks and soups, vegetable braises and even desserts such as lemon cheesecake and puddings. I was impressed by the range and variety of dishes, many of which could be cooked in a conventional oven but would take much longer. As Suzanne notes in her introduction, "The pressure cooker has brought back into my life those delicious braises and stews that used to bubble away on the stove for hours. Now I think nothing of making a melt-in-the-mouth osso bucco or a French daube at the drop of a hat. Those many hours of long, slow cooking have miraculously turned into half an hour. A great bolognese sauce that used to take three hours now takes just twenty-five minutes."

When we moved house last year, we planned to sell the pressure cooker in a garage sale but somehow it missed the sale. Now I'm really glad it didn't and I'm equally glad that this new cookbook has opened my eyes to a range of recipes to try. I still enjoy having a casserole cooking slowly on the stove for hours but, for days when I don't have time, I'll gladly be pulling out the pressure cooker to replicate the end result.

Which cookbook did I exploit?

April was "cookbook exploitation month", as explained by Dan from Casual Kitchen. His theory is that we cook 80 per cent of the time from 20 per cent of our cookbook collection, so he nominated April as the month to dig out an old cookbook and exploit it by cooking recipes from it.

After perusing my many cookbooks, and sadly concluding that Dan's 80:20 rule was correct, I chose to exploit The Food I Love by Neil Perry. This was a wedding present from a good friend and I remember excitedly flicking through the pages and planning all the meals I was going to make. But after I marked it up with post-it notes, back it went, unused, on the shelf.

Neil Perry is one of Australia's best-known chefs. He has three restaurants in Sydney, Rockpool Bar & Grill at Crown Casino in Melbourne, appears on the food channel on Foxtel and coordinates the in-flight catering for Qantas. I've been lucky enough to dine several times at Rockpool in Melbourne, including one magical meal in the private dining room. Everything I've eaten at Rockpool has been sublime but it was the side dishes, normally an afterthought to the star of the meal, that blew me away. Velvety creamed corn, sexy broccoli (yes, it can be done), decadent macaroni cheese - each of these dishes was a gem and a highlight in its own right. I thought no more of these dishes until I opened The Food I Love - and there were the recipes for these very dishes! Tres excitement! Of course, my heart nearly stopped at the amount of cream in the macaroni cheese dish, and I need to get a juicer in order to make the creamed corn as velvety as Neil's, but no matter - now I know how to do it!

As I flicked through the book, my list of dishes to try grew longer. There were breakfast recipes, pasta dishes, seafood main courses, plenty of steak and chicken options and a few desserts. I found the dessert chapter disappointing; although the classic dishes featured, such as creme caramel, bread and butter pudding, summer pudding and hot chocolate souffle, were all beautifully executed, there was no sexy new dish that took my fancy or inspired me to rush into the kitchen. However, there was plenty of inspiration in the savoury chapters, so this is only a
minor quibble.

Despite my long list, I made only a handful of dishes from the book and, unfortunately, I don't think I exploited it enough. However, several of the dishes I made were so good that they've entered my "repeat repertoire" and I'll definitely be making them again. The Spanish-style chicken casserole, with a rich tomatoey paprika-scented braise sauce, was full of flavour and a great dish on a cool night. It takes an hour to cook with chicken legs, but the time can be considerably cut down by using chicken breasts.

The gnocchi with braised veal shanks and parmesan was also a winner, although I substituted lamb shanks for the veal. This was ridiculously easy to put together and it was then left to simmer for a few hours on the stove, reducing to a rich, thick braise with meltingly tender lamb shank meat flaked through it. I even made my own gnocchi, as per Neil's recipe, to accompany the lamb braise, and this is another dish I'll be making again.

Barbecued chicken, its smoky flavours beautifully offset by a sauce of velvety pureed zucchini and garlic, will also go into my repertoire. It's amazing how something so easy to cook can look and taste so impressive once plated. I loved learning Neil's cheffy tricks to help impress the family.

Other dishes we enjoyed this month were zucchini and parmesan soup, pea and pumpkin risotto, braised lamb shoulder with gremolata, cauliflower with saffron, pine nuts and raisins (a good match with the Spanish-style chicken casserole) and parsnip puree. Those at the top of the list to try soon include the Moroccan eggplant salad, flathead with beer batter, the many different BBQ beef dishes with different sauces, the Persian-style lamb stew and more of the magical side dishes. It's great to see vegetable accompaniments treated with the same respect and imagination as main courses.

I won't be leaving this cookbook to languish unloved on my bookshelf again but will be referring to it much more often. Now I just need to rescue some more of my cookbooks from the same dusty fate. Thanks to Dan for coming up with such a great concept - look forward to participating again!

Cookbook exploitation month

Daniel from Casual Kitchen is holding a "cookbook exploitation" month, where you dig out your most underused and forgotten cookbooks and use them.

"Remember, the 80/20 rule tells us that 80% of your meals likely come from just 20% of your recipes," Daniel writes. "It also tells us that you only really use 20% of your cookbooks - the other 80% of them just sit on your shelf, collecting dust. What does this mean? It means that there's a gold mine of recipes waiting for you in your very own kitchen, in cookbooks you already own. Therefore, the purpose of Cookbook Exploitation Month is to break out one or two of your underused, unloved cookbooks, flip through them and then systematically exploit them for all they're worth."

I think this is a wonderful idea! I have so many cookbooks, all of which I love and have marked up with plenty of "must-try" notes, but many of which I've yet to make. I don't even want to mention the filing cabinet and box full of magazine clippings. (At my mum's suggestion, I even tried to set up a "things I want to make soon" folder, into which I'd put the recipes that I most wanted to try in the next few weeks, but gave up after this folder started bulging apart at the seams. It doesn't work if you cram everything in there!)

So what cookbook shall I exploit this month? I'm ashamed at how many new cookbooks I've acquired recently and that I'm yet to cook from. I could travel - to Spain with Movida by Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish, to France with My French Vue by Shannon Bennett, or to Morocco, India and Syria with Feast Bazaar by Barry Vera. But I think I prefer a more general cookbook, as I might get sick of the one cuisine for the whole month.

Maggie's Kitchen by Maggie Beer or Gordon Ramsay's Cooking For Friends cover a wide range of cuisines and meals. But some of their recipes can be a little tricky, or require special ingredients, and I want to keep things simple this month.

Perhaps I could dig out some old favourites. It's been a long time since I opened The Naked Chef or The Return of the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver, or New Food or Old Food by Jill Dupleix. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook (metricated edition) was my bible when I moved out of home, but I haven't consulted it in years.

It's going to be a tough choice. I hope I can make a decision and get exploiting before the month is up!