Chef's Kitchen

Each month we bring a guest chef into our Chef's Kitchen column to give us a tip that elevates their cooking (and hopefully ours). They also provide a recipe that showcases their tip. Our guest chef this month is Amy Pennington, a Seattle cook, author, and urban farmer.

Amy Pennington is a cook, author, and urban farmer. She is the author of Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen, Apartment Gardening, Apples from Harvest to Table AND Fresh Pantry - Learn to Love Your Vegetables, One Month at a Time . She is also the host of the PBS show Check, Please! Northwest. Pennington has been named one of Seattle Magazine's 2013 Top 50 most powerful players in Seattle's food scene and as a 2012 Bon Appetit Tastemaker. She has been featured in Bon Appetit, Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, GOOP.com, and Apartment Therapy. She runs GoGo Green Garden, an urban farming service specializing in organic edible gardens for homes and businesses.

Photo by Della Chen Photography

Save Your Scraps!, by Amy Pennington

Many a meal can be made of the little kitchen extras we tend to think of as scraps; those food bits that are destined for the trash. But before you toss, consider how they might be used. Parsley stems are great for juicing (green juice!) or adding to a homemade vegetable stock for flavor. Orange peels can be added to spirits, along with a handful of herbs, for a winter infusion - Orange-Rosemary Vodka martinis, anyone?

One of my favorite recipes using kitchen scraps is Seconds Soup, from my eBook CARROTS - a yearly series of eBooks that highlight one single, seasonal ingredient. Save your carrot peels for this fragrant broth, and add in any leftover meat. Here, small pulls of short ribs are used to deepen the soup's satisfying nature. Carrot peels are cooked in a broth alongside a few slices from an onion and a stalk of celery, if you have them on hand. If not, skip them and toss in another vegetable to flavor the broth-scraps of fennel frond, parsley stalks, anything. To intensify the flavor, this stock is heavily scented with whole spices like cinnamon stick and star anise. While not absolutely necessary, they most definitely take the soup to another level.

Click here to see Amy's recipe

Excerpted from: FreshPantry: Carrots

www.amy-pennington.com

February 2014
Reprinted February 2015