Here's a quick post for a quick, healthy, easy-peasy, and super ethical snack to inaugurate a new series about various ways to reduce our food waste!
One of the components of my quest to minimize food waste is finding ways to use the entire plant. It's so easy to buy whatever we want whenever we want that we have stopped having to persevere when it comes to food. This means that it's really easy for us to just throw away the less desirable parts of a plant.
We all do it. Carrot tops. Radish greens. Broccoli stems. All end up in the trash, when in fact there's so much nutrition and value to come from those things.
You got a taste of this with my last post. In place of parsley, I used carrot tops from the Stone Barns carrots in the gremolata we paired with the steak. It had a similar herbaceous character as parsley, and meant I didn't waste any of the plant.
Fair Share Farm had some purple sprouting broccoli in a recent order, and I cooked up the florets in the air fryer, enjoying them with a simple meal of miso-glazed salmon and rice. This left a ton of greens and stems, which I looked up how to use them. I found myself drawn to several recipes for broccoli stem hummus, and for a simple little healthy meal when I didn't feel like cooking one night after teaching.
I started by removing the leaves from the stems and cutting them stems into smaller pieces, cooking them in salty boiling water for a couple minutes until tender. I then added the leaves to the boiling pot for a quick blanche and drained, putting the stems in the food processor with about a half cup of tahini, three garlic cloves, juice of a lemon, sea salt, and a can of garbanzo beans. I topped the processor with a handful of the herb mix I also got from the farm.
I then added enough olive oil in a stream to keep the blades spinning and the hummus got to a good consistency. Hummus is an art––it requires constant tasting and tweaking in order to get the perfect balance of flavors and texture.
Loaded with nutrients, veggie goodness, and absolute deliciousness, this hummus is an ideal little snack for when you need something easy. And even better, it will last a while in the fridge for whenever you need a healthy snack. Pair with raw or pickled veg or pita chips!