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‘Throw-away’ food served up in sustainable menus

Leftover lime peel, parmesan rind and beetroot leaves are just some of the throw-away foods finding their way into dishes in Adelaide restaurants as part of this month’s Sustainable Table challenge.

Apr 20, 2016, updated Apr 20, 2016
Pizza with haloumi and backyard lime aioli topping.

Pizza with haloumi and backyard lime aioli topping.

Etica on Gilles Street, Café Troppo on Whitmore Square and GoodLife Modern Organic Pizza on Hutt Street and Jetty Road are all taking part in the challenge, adding special items to their menus that align with the Give A Fork campaign.

Give A Fork encourages restaurants to think about where ingredients are coming from and how they are produced, with an emphasis on using more vegetables and organic or free-range meat, as well as edible ingredients that would often get thrown away.

Etica owners Melissa and Federico Pisanelli say their philosophy of using organic and ethically sourced ingredients already aligned with those of the Give A Fork campaign.

“We’re serving beet green and ricotta-filled green ravioli in a parmesan rind and vegetable broth,” they say.

“Beet greens are the leaves of beetroot that we pickle for our antipasti; ricotta is comprised of recooked whey from the mozzarella-making process; turnip tops are excess from our turnip remoulade; parmesan rinds are left over from the 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano, and the vegetables of the broth are mostly ends used in other dishes.”

The special dish costs $25, with $5 from every sale going towards Sustainable Table.

Etica-special-resized

Etica’s beet greens and ricotta ravioli in parmesan rind and vegetable broth.

GoodLife Modern Organic Pizza is serving up the Alto Pizza-Dirty for Give A Fork. It is topped with local spiced chickpeas, La Casa del Formaggio haloumi and GoodLife backyard lime aioli.

The large pizza is $28.90, with $2 from every sale going to Give A Fork, while the small pizza is $17.90, with $1 going towards the cause.

Jake Greenrod from GoodLife says taking part in the Give a Fork campaign is a natural fit for the store.

“GoodLife has been in operation for 13 years – certified organic for 10 of those and carbon-neutral for nine. We’re doing most of what is intended anyway,” he says.

Greenrod says GoodLife also has a strong policy on avoiding food wastage.

“To be honest, we don’t throw away a lot at GoodLife, as wastage is a factor any successful restaurant tries to minimise anyway, but for the aioli we used a lime marmalade where the whole lime was used.

“On our special, the only wasted part would be the onion skin and eggshells, and I can’t think of any uses for those two.”

The Give A Fork campaign’s emphasis on sustainability appealed to Café Troppo.

“We chose to showcase our open-range wild boar pizza, as although we predominantly have a vegetarian menu, we pride ourselves on using sustainable meats like kangaroo and wild boar,” says owner Maddie Harris.

“We have been selling a few of the boar pizzas each day and also have it on our Friday night menu. I’m not sure of the exact numbers but we’ve found it to be selling well.

“Using an ingredient that’s usually thrown away has been a welcome challenge, as we’re always looking for ways to get nearer to our zero-waste goals.

“For this dish we’ve cooked the wild boar meat, which is naturally very lean, in some of the fat produced from cooking the South Australian bacon on our breakfast menu.”

The open-range wild-boar pizza with fennel seed and fresh chilli is available for $12, with $2 of every sale going to Give A Fork.

Sustainable Table is a not-for-profit organisation based in Melbourne that works towards educating the public on the importance of sustainability in the food system and the environment. It lets restaurant and cafés decide how much of their proceeds from selling their special is donated to the Give a Fork campaign.

Money raised will go towards supporting Sustainable Table’s food education and awareness work.

 

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