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Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

KaiApril 17, 2021

Chefs on why you should take your leftovers home – and how to jazz them up

Contributing writer
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

A new initiative is taking on food insecurity and food wastage by encouraging diners to take uneaten food home. And, as chefs taking part of the scheme explain, what you do with those leftovers needn’t be limited to a quick blat in the microwave.  

It’s hard to know just how much food our local cafes and restaurants waste, but it’s estimated New Zealand’s hospitality industry creates around 24,366 tonnes of food waste each year, most of which is avoidable. That comes at a huge environmental and social cost. 

While we’re wasting masses of food across the country, the Salvation Army distributed more than 113,000 food parcels last year – the highest number in the 14 years of its yearly report, which in 2020 suggested food insecurity was on the rise in Aotearoa, as did other charities.

“Hunger is huge, food waste is huge,” says Joe O’Connell, chef de cuisine at Ozone Coffee Roasters.

Ozone is one of more than 40 restaurants across the country to sign up to a new fundraising scheme by not-for-profit pay-as-you-feel dining initiative Everybody Eats, which encourages diners to ask for takeaway boxes for leftover meals and donate $5 in the process. The special boxes, called “Goodie Boxes”, allow diners to make an instant donation to Everybody Eats via Apple or Google Pay. It’s an attempt to make a firm link between food wastage and food insecurity in Aotearoa – two birds with one stone, if you will; save the leftovers on your plate from ending up in landfill and help someone access a delicious meal. 

The G
The Goodie Box initiative has been taken up by more than 40 restaurants and cafes across the country (Photo: Supplied)

Reducing food waste is one of the driving forces of the menu at Ozone, which has locations in Auckland and New Plymouth, so it’s a natural fit for the brunch spot to take part in the initiative, says O’Connell. “As people who use a much, much, much higher volume than your average consumer, it’s our responsibility to respect that food, keep it out of the bin and use it as much as possible.”

He’s excited about the prospect of the food boxes: “I’d say it’s a conversation starter for sure, and the option to pay it forward is great as well.”

While the cafe’s portions are designed to avoid leftovers in the first place, if customers find themselves with any, Ozone wants to encourage them to take them home in a Goodie Box – which, with its bold design, quite literally brightens up the somewhat grim connotations of the doggy bag.

Joe O’Connell of Ozone Coffee Roasters (Photo: Supplied)

O’Connell’s ethos when it comes to using leftovers is simple: “You want it to be quick and easy.” His favourite method for repurposing leftovers from his menu is to turn those bits and pieces into bruschetta. Take a chunky hunk of sourdough rubbed with olive oil and garlic. Then, tumble over whatever you have leftover from their menu: it could be the smoked kahawai, a couple of spoonfuls of mince or a few florets of barbecued broccoli and chilli. “That’s honestly the best thing,” he says. 

Then there’s the smoked fish kedgeree, which O’Connell reckons would work particularly well as an upcycled leftover meal. Top it with a fried egg, some sriracha and some mayo and you’ve got dinner for one the next day.

Theo Papouis at his Wellington restaurant Oikos Hellenic Cuisine. (Photo: Shannon Raizis)

You’ll find the boxes at Oikos Hellenic Cuisine in Wellington too. Theo Papouis, the restaurant’s chef and owner, says it’s not uncommon for people to take food from his restaurant home. “Because of the style of food, it’s quite easy to eat at home.” 

He’s excited that the boxes further normalise taking home leftovers, and encourage his customers to feel confident in asking for a takeaway box. “The fact that it prompts you to help out someone in need is even better,” he adds.

If you are lucky enough to have leftover slow-cooked lamb from Oikos, Papouis suggests: “Just heat it up, toss in some canned tomatoes or tomato paste and cooking liquid and then you’ve basically got a beautiful ragu for a pasta – easy.” It’s tried and tested too. “I do that myself if I have that leftover from the restaurant.”

Then there’s the chicken kalamaki; grilled chicken skewers with garlic, paprika and wild oregano. If you’ve got a couple of those as leftovers, they’re perfect for lunch the next day. Simply take them off the skewer, fill some pita breads or make a wrap. “There’s always something you can do with things. Don’t just throw stuff away,” he says.

Chef Alex Davies of Christchurch’s Gatherings Restaurant (Image: Naomi Haussmann)

Alex Davies runs Christchurch’s Gatherings, another restaurant taking part in the Goodie Box initiative. 

Working in the hospitality industry means some waste is unfortunately inevitable, but Davies believes businesses can do more to avoid this. “If you’re conscious of it and you try to make use of every part of the plant or animal you’re using, you can do your bit throughout the kitchen and then through to the guest,” he says.

Once the food is served, it’s mostly out of their control whether it’s wasted or not. But, Davies says, “if people have leftovers, then taking it home is the best thing they can do”.

How can customers repurpose leftovers from his vege and fish-focused restaurant? Davies suggests chopping leftover veges and tossing through salads with grains to “liven them up”. It’s a simple shortcut that can add a surprising amount of flair to your weeknight green salad.

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    The grilled cheese toastie provides another vessel for leftovers, he says – just pop whatever you’ve got between a couple of slabs of bread with cheese. The crispy eggplant with butter vindaloo sauce off Gatherings’ current menu would work particularly well in a toastie. “You get all the goodness of the night before but you’re not just eating exactly the same thing reheated.”

    The challenge of avoiding food waste provides a creative challenge for chefs the world over, says Joe O’Connell. Being able to turn offcuts of meat, imperfect vegetables and stale bread into tasty kai has long been a badge of honour for cooks. “You have to be strategic, you’ve got to plan that out, you have to be really thoughtful. “And,” he adds, “it has to be delicious.”

    So there you have it: dealing with leftovers isn’t limited to zapping them in the microwave or eating them cold out of the box on your work lunch break (though there’s nothing inherently wrong with either of those options, of course).

    Keep going!
    Photograph of Pukekohe from the air showing some of the rural land and homes around the high density residential areas and town (Photo: interest.co.nz)
    Photograph of Pukekohe from the air showing some of the rural land and homes around the high density residential areas and town (Photo: interest.co.nz)

    KaiApril 15, 2021

    New report warns that we’re building over our food basket

    Staff Writer
    Photograph of Pukekohe from the air showing some of the rural land and homes around the high density residential areas and town (Photo: interest.co.nz)
    Photograph of Pukekohe from the air showing some of the rural land and homes around the high density residential areas and town (Photo: interest.co.nz)

    The 2021 Our Land report has raised serious warnings about our most productive food-growing land being turned over to housing. Alex Braae explains.

    What’s all this then?

    The environment ministry and Stats NZ have produced a new report called Our Land, which outlines exactly what New Zealand’s land is being used for, or how it is being left alone. Over and above the stats, it also shows the connections between land use, the economy, environmental outcomes, and even human wellbeing. 

    What’s the big takeaway from the report?

    A major fear that gets outlined in detail is about the spread of cities and residential areas into highly productive land – the sort that is vital for the growing of food. One point the report opens with is that our cities were mostly founded near this sort of top quality land, because that allowed enough food to be grown to sustain them. But over time, they’ve spread exponentially, taking up more and more of the best food-growing land in the process. Highly productive land is also becoming more fragmented, which makes it harder to use for commercial purposes. And the report notes that once productive land has been converted to housing, it is “almost impossible” to reverse.

    But hang on, we’ve got a housing crisis – shouldn’t our cities be spreading out?

    Yes, but it depends on how and where. The report notes that “most urban expansion is outwards onto productive land rather than upwards in multi-storey buildings”, and that it is cheaper to develop productive flat land compared to less productive hill country. There’s plenty of land in New Zealand – population density is relatively low on a world scale, and only 1% of land in this country is urban. And much of the really productive land that gets built over ends up as more like lifestyle blocks and low-density residential, which doesn’t really do much to solve the housing crisis. 

    What are the stats on this?

    The stats in the report at times measure slightly different things, but as a baseline: between 2002 and 2019, the amount of land unavailable for food production because it had been built over for housing increased by 54%. Urban land cover increased by 15% between 1996 and 2018, and 86% of the land converted to urban in that period was previously “exotic grassland” – the sort of pasture you can chuck animals on – while 9% of the converted land was previously horticultural. 

    The foundations are being laid. Photo: Getty

    What are the economic and environmental implications of this?

    As the report notes, “our exports and domestic food production currently rely on the small amount of highly productive land we have. Using land that is not highly productive for food growing, especially horticulture, results in lower yields unless more intensive land management approaches are used.” It’s all connected too – here’s how. 

    That intensity can in turn damage the land, creating a cycle by which ever more inputs like fertiliser are needed, which has flow-on effects for water quality, which harms biodiversity, which damages New Zealand’s international image as a premium food producer, which means production volume over value has to be prioritised, which means more intensity is needed… you probably get the picture. 

    Overall, the survey found soil health indicators haven’t exactly got worse over the past few decades, but it’s hard to say they’ve got better either. For example, 61% of dairy farming and cropping sites had Olsen phosphorus levels above the target range – this essentially means that too much fertiliser has been applied. 

    What else is in the report?

    Much of the report establishes the basic facts about New Zealand’s land use. For example, just under half is currently native flora. Over the decades, this has steadily been declining. Of that loss, between 2012 and 2018 more than half got turned into exotic grassland, and about a fifth ended up as plantation forestry. 

    Of the remaining land, 40% is exotic grassland, 8% is plantation forestry, and 2% is horticulture and cropping. The rest is urban. 

    What about the sort of farming that gets done?

    Over a series of decades, the nature of farming has changed. Beef cattle and sheep numbers spiked before the 1990s, before steadily declining. Dairy cattle numbers have been on an opposite trajectory, though between 2015 and 2020 the number of dairy cows declined slightly. 

    And what are the climate change implications on all of this?

    Land use is one of the fundamental drivers of climate change. Farming – particularly the farming of ruminant animals like cows and sheep – create methane emissions. Land converted away from native flora releases carbon into the atmosphere. Low-density cities increase the emissions needed to make them work properly, and make less land available for carbon-storing trees, and so on. 

    All of those changes are the results of decisions people have made – both at an individual level, and on a nationwide policy scale. As the ministry’s secretary for the environment Vicky Robertson put it, “climate change and a growing population are only going to make future choices more difficult”.

    Kai