Caulflower leaves, Tomatoes and pinenuts

Nothing bugs me more than wasting food, and yet one thing I had never even considered using was cauliflower leaves. I used to work in a restaurant where we would use a huge amount of cauliflower. Each morning we would prep the cauliflower, 30kg, removing the leaves and cutting the cauliflowers into 8 large pieces. We did compost and dispose of the food waste in that restaurant so the waste of this didn’t seem too bad at the time. Looking back now, I see the use of this particular recipe could have been very useful and lucrative as at the time we used to have a wilted greens on the menu. Whilst this reduces the waste of the cauliflower leaves, you do still leave the end of the stalk, but some improvement is better than none.

1 cauliflower, saving the florets for another dinner or dish

70 g cherry tomatoes, washed and cut in half

20 g pine nuts toasted and lightly browned

3 cloves of garlic

30 ml olive oil

150 ml water

Heat the oven to 160 C

Put the cherry tomatoes onto a tray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Using a sharp knife , remove the leafy part of the cauliflower, reserve all the florets for another time.

Trim off the leaves.

Each leaf has a stalk running through the centre. Tim each leaf into 4, along the stalk, so you should have two leafy parts with a thin strip of stalk and two thin pieces of stalk. If the stalk parts are too large trim them in half or chop them, which ever you find easier

Heat the olive oil in a pan, add the stalks first and gently fry them until they soften.

Add the leaves and the chopped garlic and lightly fry

Pour in the water and let it steam the greens. Once the water has evaporated and the green have all softened, toss in the tomatoes and the pine nuts. Season with sea salt and cracked pepper and serve.

It’s delicious, the stalks should have a bit of bite to them, you don’t want them to be mushy. Its one of my favourite low waste recipes.