Quick Tomato Soup/ Berlin Skipping

 

On the way to breakfast at my friends I couldn't help but stop off at the skip. It's sort of an addiction. I was pretty late for breakfast, but from the above skip haul, I whipped a quick and easy tomato soup for lunch. I basically chopped up all the tomatoes and simmered them with some garlic, basil and oil. And the freshly baked rolls from the skip went perfectly. This is basically my favourite way to cook, when the skip decides what I'll be preparing.

- Dara

Creamy Mushroom Tart / Skipping in Dublin

I went skipping in Dublin recently. There was a lot of food in the bins, but this is all we could carry.

Among the skipping haul was a box of mushrooms, double cream, butter and pastry. Inspired by all these ingredients, I decided to make a creamy mushroom tart.

I fried the mushrooms in some of the butter with plenty of garlic. I was bold and I added some salt. Once they were cooked to my liking/ patience, I added in the carton of double cream and let the mixture cook and thicken for a few minutes.

While all this was happening, I pre-heated the oven and flattened the pastry out in a baking dish (I'm lying, I just threw it in the oven - I despise waiting for pre-heated ovens). After the pastry cooked a bit, I took the pot of creamy mushrooms and spread it evenly over the pastry. I popped this in the oven for a bit until the pastry was crispy.

I also made some garlic bread with some skipped ciabattas. I cut them into slices and spread the butter on them, then rubbed in some diced garlic and threw them in the oven. Delicious. Watch yer heart.

- Dara

Using Stuff Up: One

Using stuff up is one of my preferred ways of cooking. Especially if I'm a guest and cooking at somebody's house. I never feel bad about using ingredients if they 'need to be used up'. Same reason I like skipping. And it means I don't have to make big decisions about what to buy and deal with that horrible ordeal. So, this is one of those and I don't have a name for it.

The base for this was the end of my rocket pesto pasta. It was quite oily but there was a lot of flavour there. So I wanted to expand on it and make it something different. I threw in a lot of things that were around me and I'll try to recount them, mostly.

I chopped up the leftover, oily spaghetti pasta and heated up the pot. There was some really stale bread that needed using up, so I broke it up and stirred it around in the oily mixture, adding some tahini and some old juice that may not have been so nice to drink but worked to offset the bitter-but-creamy tahini and softened the bread. I threw in some tomato puree, some chopped carrots, possibly some vinegar and maybe nutritional yeast. I'm not sure. It's a bit of a blur. But I enjoyed it more that the original pasta. Don't follow this as a recipe. Just use stuff up.

It's fun to use stuff up.

- Dara

Skipped Rocket Pesto

I'm in Vienna at the moment. With a friend, I found two packets of organic rocket (or ruccola in German) in a skip near an eco shop. The ruccola was on the way out, so I decided to make rocket pesto, so it would last a few days longer.

 I washed then sliced up the ruccola finely and add lots of diced garlic, oils (olive, peanut, and pumpkin seed), lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a few finely diced capers for extra flavour. I left it overnight to let the flavours get to know each other. Then, when the time came to feast (it is always time to feast), I just stirred it in to some nice brown organic (or bio as they say here) pasta.

I used 500g of pasta and it was still rather oily. I'd recommend bread for soakage. Afterwards I turned the remainder of oily the mixture into another meal, which you can see in the next post. Hope to see you there. Goodbye for now.

- Dara

Banana & Cherry Slices

I've been considering cutting down my refined sugar intake. Or maybe cutting it out completely. I met someone else who is already doing this and it sort of re-enforced my thinking. So, when I went skipping (see my last post) and found 2 boxes or cherries, 6 bananas, and lots of oranges, I decided it was a good time to start some sugar-free baking. The recipe is incredibly simple and I really enjoyed these treats. They have a lovely subtle sweetness with more character than the sugary buns I had been baking. Now I'm sold on this sugar-free lark, and well on my way. Here's what I did.

I took the pips out of the cherries, squeezed the juice out of a few oranges and a lemon, and blended this all in a bowl with the 6 peeled bananas (like a lovely, thick smoothie). I added flour until I got a nice sloppy consistency, and I chopped up the other box of cherries and threw them in to get a nice chunky sweetness in the slices. I added a bit of oil and some nutmeg and cinammon. I poured the whole mixture onto a baking tray, thinly so it would cook within a reasonable amount of time.  Then I sprinkled some sunflower seeds on top for a laugh. And that's it. Let them cool and they're even nicer. Sugar-free and vegan. Beautiful.

- Dara

Skipping in Galway / Tips for New Skippers

I went skipping in Galway (Ireland) recently. I had lived there for years before I ever did any skipping, so it was nice to go back in my current mode and SKIP IT. I was there visiting a friend, so I brought him along and it was fun. We had no luck at first, even after scaling a wall into a supermarket back yard (normally this much effort is not necessary). However, upon hopping back over the wall to freedom, we ended up finding a whole plastic-bound package of milk cartons, in date. Presumably thrown over the supermarket wall by some kids or adults or just people. A strange happening, but my friend wanted milk for his tea so it worked out nicely. Though he got a little more than he bargained for (about 8 litres), and after some recent dairy-heavy skip hauls, I wasn't in the mood to help him out with its consumption.

We thought we'd have to be content with our milky lot, but decided to check out the back of one more shopping centre. After discovering several bags of raw meat, I realised I was probably in the wrong bin. 'This must be the butcher's bin,' I thought. More bags of meat. 'Yes, this is most certainly The Butcher's Bin.' I guess the people of Galway don't buy much meat, because it wall all in The Butcher's Bin. Anyway, after this deathly, fleshy encounter, I spied some lovely, clean supermarket bins - but in a cage, as often happens. Luckily, this one was bound with a loose chain & lock rather than a tight bolt & lock. So with some serious team work (arm-stretching from the front to pull the bin near us, and minor finger-pushing from behind through the small cage holes) we managed to gradually wheel it over to the gap between the cage doors. Because of the awkward positioning of the bin, and the small gap between the doors, I could only reach the stuff on top - which proved to be more than we could carry anyway. I foolishly brought some weak bin bags with me (you know, those white ones - good for nothing), which promptly broke and tore and spilled everywhere as soon as we filled them and reminded me of my own film, Hannah, in some kind of joke the universe was playing on me (I even had flowers to add to the coincidence, and dare-I-say irony, of it all - you'll see in the film). It was funny though, and the universe must be a sport because it all worked out and we managed to get home and of course it made the whole thing funnier and more enjoyable. Below is the haul we brought back. I made some delicious buns from the fruit, which you can read about in my next post.

  

If you haven't been skipping before and are considering it (great!) then I would recommend the following:

- Bring sturdy bags for skipping. Ideally an old backpack or gearbag. Bin bags are very unreliable and do not make for a stealthy getaway. (Fittingly, I just found a beautiful new backpack in a skip in Limerick, so that will be my regular from now on!)

- Bring a torch, pretty essential for night-time skipping (though I've used my phone in the past - not ideal)

- Keep looking. If you don't have luck at the first skip don't give up, there are plenty more skips in the sea, or city even. The right one for you is just around the corner.

- Always leave the bin as you found it. If you make a mess then it's likely they'll lock them up or hide them away next time. If you like being a spy then you can always pretend you're a spy on some kind of bin-related mission.

If you have any skipping questions, or would like to share some skipping locations and tips it would be cool to hear from you. Leave a comment with your email or just drop me a line here:

dara [at] fakedogfilms.com

- Dara

Cabbage Bake

That Christmas Eve skipping haul I posted a while ago went a long way. I made some nice dishes from it, though I think I've had enough of dairy again for a while (then again I may skip a wheel of cheese next, so who knows). This recipe has some superfluous cheese, but apart from that it's delicious and vegan and entirely from the skip (condiments and seeds aside).

So, I chopped up the entire head, steamed it for a bit, then fried it up in a pot with some chopped garlic and oil. I added lots of sesame seeds, some Frank's Hot sauce (we don't work for them, really), tomato puree, and black pepper. The mixture was delicious and vegan just like that, but I went one step further, as I had cheese to use.

I put the mixture in a baking dish, used my last few slices of (at this stage extra mature) cheese, and stuck it in the oven. I served it with some garlic bread and (purchased!) veggie sausages. It was one of the nicest things I've created in a while, and I sort of regretted using the cheese as it would have been just lovely without it. But I don't regret it that much.

- Dara

Creamy Lentil Curry

Another recipe that used some of my Christmas skipping haul. I washed and cooked up some red lentils till they started to go a bit mushy (I actually blended them as well for a smooth consistency). I fried up some various curry spices, onion, and garlic in a frying pan with lots of oil. I added this to the lentil mixture, along with some cooked chickpeas and some carrots and broccoli that I got from the skip and let it all mellow out together.

I don't eat dairy, but I had six cartons of skipped cream to use up, so I threw one in to the curry. It really set it off and gave it a lovely, well, creaminess. Coconut milk would give the same effect, but you don't often find that in the skip. Serve with some rice, or potatoes, or whatever you have lying around and you're done. It's pretty quick, and an especially good way of using up left-over veg, of which there is plenty at Christmastime.

Vegan Apple Crumble

In my Christmas Eve skipping haul there were about a dozen packets of pre-sliced apples & grapes in snack-packs. There was also a bag of peanuts & cashews. And a few dozen pitta breads. So, for Christmas dessert I decided to make an apple crumble mainly from these ingredients.

I mixed the apples with some fair trade muscovado sugar and spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, mixed spice). I placed them at the bottom of a baking dish. Then I made the topping. I crumbled about four pittas into a bowl with some of the nuts (washed as they were salty) and some brown sugar and a bit of flour. I added in a good bit of oil and mixed it all up until I got some nice crumbly clumps. I piled this on top of the apple mixture and stuck it in the oven. You don't want the top burning, so don't have it on too hot. I also poured some maple syrup over it towards the end. It's done whenever you want to eat it! It depends on your crumble preference.

It will hold out of the fridge in a cool place for a few days and I think it's even better cold.
(Props to Erin and Anna for getting me on the crumble train.)

- Dara

Skipping Christmas

I've been doing a good bit of skipping these days, or dumpster-diving as the Americans call it, somewhat less pleasantly. To those who have not tried it, I would highly recommend it. It's essentially reclaiming often-perfect food from going to waste, usually from a skip out the back of a supermarket or shop. I'm at home in Ireland currently and haven't really done much since I came home for Christmas. So, at 11pm on Christmas Eve I decided I must go and see what my hometown had to offer. I dragged my brother (and his car) along with me and soon hit the jackpot out the back of the big, evil, British supermarket chain. You know, the blue one, starts with a T. Anyway, this is what we took home, but we could have taken twenty times this amount and fed the entire town for Christmas dinner. But we didn't, we just took what we could use and carry.

      (I even found a chocolate bunny, but that didn't make it into the picture. )

Skipping is my favorite way to scavenge for food. It sure beats shopping, which I really hate and need money for. You don't have to queue, worry about prices, fair trade, ethics, animal treatment, the carbon footprint of your food - it's all rotting in a bin, so anything you take and use can only be positive. You're not supporting any unsustainable or cruel industries, in fact you're feeding off the waste they're causing. It's beautiful.

Though there is a stigma when people first hear about skipping. Like my brother said, 'You imagine someone eating a half-eaten pizza from a dirty bin,' like in those (American) movies. But it's really not like that at all. Often supermarkets are quite meticulous in their binning of foods, double- and triple-bagging goods. Heaven forbid, even the bin should be a mess. And everything's wrapped in plastic these days, which is quite convenient. Even if you don't eat the food you take from the skip, you can compost it and recycle the packaging.

My favorite bit of it all is probably creatively using up the food. It's like 'Ready, Steady, Cook'. Work with the ingredients you've got. In fact, I'm sure that could be a good show: 'Ready, Steady, Skip'. Someone may have suggested that to me before (Webby, was it you?). If no one claims it I'll take full credit for the idea.

My next few entries will concern using these ingredients to make some creative veggie dishes (and even the Christmas hams were used up on the day by the non-veggies in the house). More to come!

- Dara