An Edinburgh University study last year found that more than 50m tonnes of Europe’s fruit and vegetable crop is thrown away each year – equivalent to a third of the entire total – mostly due to cosmetic standards set by the supermarkets and the food industry (to put that in context, this waste is equivalent to the climate emissions of almost 400,000 cars).
So bypass your instinct to pick the perfect specimen from the pile, and instead demand overly-bendy bananas, twisted carrots and wonky cucumbers. We’ve been conditioned to want aestheticallyperfect vegetables because supermarkets stock little else, but in reality the best-tasting produce is often knobbly, bent and a bit quirky. Perfect veg, on the other hand, is grown for looks alone and often tastes bland.
For instance, many cooks peel a cucumber, either to make it stripy or to strip it entirely, and end up wasting the skin. Of course, many cucumbers are sprayed with pesticides, so this could be seen as advisable, but an unsprayed or organic one may even save you money, because there’s no need to discard the skin, or indeed those watery insides. To test the theory, I peeled a cucumber at home and removed its core, and found they accounted for 30% of its total weight. And that is way too much to justify throwing it in the bin.
Cucumber gin cooler
I like to keep my cucumbers with the skin and watery insides intact, but if you prefer to scrape out the middle, those insides make a refreshing and quick cocktail that’s worthy of any fine cocktail.
Serves 1
1 glass ice
35ml gin
20ml elderflower cordial
2 shot glasses of cucumber insides and flesh
1 slice cucumber and edible flowers (optional), to garnish
Tip the ice into a blender with the gin, cordial and cucumber, and blend to a slush.
Pour into a glass and top with a piece of cucumber and a few edible flowers, if using.
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