Taking a deep dive into Seasoning – the third book from Angela Clutton – reveals ingenious new ways to use up fresh produce, including the scraps
recipe ANGELA CLUTTON
MELISSA THOMPSON
While reading Seasoning, it occurred to me how empowered I felt about the positive impact I can have on the planet just by making slight changes to what I cook and eat.
Split into the four seasons, Angela’s third book explores how they work, and what the different climates do to food – how the winter frost can sweeten and tenderise broccoli and sprouts; how the summer’s heat breaks down peaches’ starches to make them sweet and flavourful. And, it reiterates how eating seasonally not only means we’re eating things when they are at their most delicious and inexpensive, but that in doing so, we can help reduce the enormous energy expenditure used to make certain items available all year round. (Find out more about this on page 133).
Angela is an award-winning author, food writer, cook and presenter. She co-directs the British Library’s Food Season and is an authority on delicious, seasonal produce. Her book offers a 360-degree approach to food and cooking with tips at the end of many recipes pointing to what we might do with the scraps left over, whether its egg yolks, parmesan rinds or herb stems.
A recipe for pea & tarragon carnaroli rice urges us to use the now-empty pea pods to make stock. But because there is still flavour in the pods once a little has been extracted for the stock, Angela also suggests options for them, such as blitzing them for dip. The mouthwatering wild garlic farls produces waste in the form of potato peelings and wild garlic stems, which can then be used for crisps or to flavour a sauce. Often, these waste reduction tips can be impractical – such as a recipe built around broccoli stems without acknowledging quite how many broccoli heads would be needed to begin with – but here they are both practical and enticing.
The recipe I cooked was Angela’s spring herb & goat’s cheese soufflés (see opposite), which incredibly, is the first soufflé I’ve ever cooked. I was nervous – few dishes come with such a sense of expectation and potential failure as a soufflé – but Angela’s instructions were clear and instilled some confidence.
The dish involves a mix of herbs over which we have some freedom in choosing. I went for tarragon, dill and chives. I followed the instructions, grating parmesan, crumbling goat’s cheese, chopping the herbs. This is a big soufflé, one to present to
