Use, don't waste

What do you do with your veggie scraps? If you don't have a chance to compost them (and thus have organic matter add to the fertility of your soil), don't throw it away!

I keep a huge plastic freezer bag in my freezer, where I collect and save the peel and top ends of carrot, onion tops, the hard outer leaves of fennel or tough celery bits, mushroom stems, cilantro stems, ginger peels, kohlrabi leaves, chicken carcasses, bones from chicken wings or roast duck... when the bag is full I pop all these ingredients into a huge stockpot, adding maybe a few spices and a lot of water - and simmer away, until I have the finest, tastiest leftovers stock you can imagine.

Or what about radish leaves? It didn't dawn upon me that the leaves of tiny red radishes are actually edible (and nutritious) until I found a lovely recipe for a

Potato and Radish Soup

You'll need

350 g potatoes, preferably floury potatoes
100 g carrots
1 yellow onion
1 clove of garlic
30 g butter
600 ml vegetable or chicken stock
250 ml single cream
1 bunch of red radishes, with the greens
2 containers garden cress, snipped
salt
pepper, white if you have
nutmeg, frshly grated

Wash and peel the potatoes, scrub the carrots, peel the onion. Chop the veggies and add the minced garlic.

Heat the butter in a saucepan. Sauté the veggies until the onions are translucent, then add cream and stock an dbring to a boil. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

Wash the radish greens and spin them dry. Put aside 5 leaves, chop the remaining greens. For the soup you'll need 6 medium-large radishes, just feed the remaining ones to your family fresh and raw :-) .

Cut the radishes and the 6 leaves into julienne.

Now is the time to blend the soup, either in a blender or better with an immersion blender. Add the chopped radish leaves and the cress from 1 of the 2 containers, blend again. Taste for salt and pepper and season with nutmeg.

Ladle soup into bowls, garnish with radish julienne and leaves and the remaining garden cress.

A handful of sourdough bread croutons, or a slice of your favorite wholegrain bread will round out this delicious meal.


I can tell you I wont be wasting perfectly fine organic radish leaves in the future! - Enjoy!

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This Post was written by Petra from FoodFreak in Hamburg, Germany