How to cook with bones, shells and peel

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/04/how-to-cook-with-peel-rind-bone-shell-recipes-wasted-food-uses-tamar-adler

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The bones and shells and peels of things are where a lot of their goodness resides. It’s no more or less lamb for being meat or bone; it’s no more or less pea for being pea or pod. Grappa is made from the spent skins and stems and seeds of wine grapes; marmalade from the peels of oranges. The wine behind the grappa is great, but there are moments when only grappa will do; the fruit of the orange is delicious, but it cannot be satisfactorily spread.

Citrus peels are some of the most often forsaken throwaways. Before juicing them, remove the zest from one or two oranges or lemons and combine a spoonful of their zest, a half clove of finely chopped garlic, a big handful of roughly chopped parsley or mint, and a little crunchy salt, and you have a gorgeous and quite sophisticated sauce for sprinkling over boiled chicken or poached eggs.

I have a frugal friend who bakes and deep-fries potato skins. These are delicious, and well worth keeping in mind if you have a pot of oil ready. Carrot and turnip peels, and beet skins are only good for mulching, but vegetables will grow from soil into which their less composed selves are mixed, and owe their predecessors for the assistance.

The lovely, oily liquid left once a vegetable is cooked is a perfect concentrate of everything that went into its cooking. It should be treated as a potion that has collected the imprint of the good butter and olive oil, cloves of garlic, lemon peels, sprigs of thyme, splashes of wine, cracks of pepper, and vegetable that created it.

Use the potion from your Italian frying pepper pot to drizzle over rice. Or add it to a pot of warming tomato sauce. Save the lovely green murk from the Swiss chard pan to warm the Swiss chard tomorrow, which will be happier for the chance to spend time with yesterday’s more experienced cooking. The drippings from a pan of roasting meat are delicious on hot toast or mixed into cooked rice or cooking beans, or soups of either.

Tail ends of loaves of bread are as good as their heads, and perhaps more useful. Among their dozens of talents is their ability to turn into soup. Warm some olive oil, add a sliced garlic clove and a finely sliced leek, cook them slowly for a few minutes, add four cups of cubed, crustless stale bread, four cups of broth potion and let it cook into a thick, unrecognisable, delicious soup. Eat it drizzled with a lot of olive oil and grated with fresh parmesan.

Or do the most sensible thing that you can in most kitchens at most times, which is put the tail ends of everything in a pot, season it well with salt, add a bit of cubed potato and some butter, and simmer it until it is all tender.