Got way too much summer veg? Just cook it

A simple approach to a surplus of produce, TikTok's dubious toothpick trend, and a choc treat that makes you smarter and prettier (maybe).

Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter. This edition is by guest writer Olivia Sisson. It’s lovely to have you here! 

In 1967 my great grandmother “Mama Laura” boarded her first flight. She was on her way to meet my mother, her granddaughter, who had just been born. Mama Laura flew from North Carolina to Virginia to meet the baby. My grandad “Hoss” met her at baggage claim. 

As her suitcase rounded the carousel, a bushel of sweet potatoes spilled from it. Tubers tumbled across the polished airport floor. Mama Laura had grown them, packed them, hustled them across state lines. Hoss’s favourite food. Her koha to him and the whānau in a tender moment.

And what did Hoss do with those sweet potatoes? Just cooked them, I imagine. They don’t need much help. Just a little butter and salt.

Just cook them. That's really all it takes. Chef Adam Harrison taught me this last year. 

We were catching up with some mates, all from the Eat NZ kaitaki crew, when subscription produce boxes came up. They’re a great alternative to supermarket produce – often more affordable, sustainable and delicious. Even with the benefits, Adam reckoned, the pressure of using up all that veg can be too much. I have experienced this feeling.

Adam is a wildly talented forager chef. The last time I got to eat his kai it was an acorn sourdough toastie with porcini-infused cheese, slow-cooked wild boar and foraged crab apple chutney. Cooked over an open flame.

On the fresh produce front though, Adam had some sage, simple words. “Just cook it.” Wash, peel, chop. Then roast, steam or boil. Add salt. Eat. You don’t have to make something new. Whether you bought too much, grew too much or are overwhelmed by your veg box, the best thing you can do is – just cook it. Worry less about recipes and more about getting the bounty into an easy, eatable format. 

I’ve been trying a “just cook it” approach. It’s been fun and freeing. It’s led me to less waste, more freestyling and a repeatable process. When my produce box arrives, I just cook it. All of it. And usually in one go. 

I wash, peel, chop, boil, roast, steam. Within an hour I’ve got all these lovely components ready to be eaten or added to something else later. This isn’t #mealprep. These are beautiful building blocks. Here are a few of my faves that have emerged in the process:

Broccoli snow

This one doesn't even need cooking. Chop the broc finely, starting from the top. Rotate it often. The texture produced should be like broccoli snow/mince. Chuck it in a bowl. Add salt. 

From here you can eat as is. A great lunchbox salad. Or you can consult the pantry. Add a half-vinegar, half-mayo dressing. Layer in crunch with nuts, seeds, crushed-up potato chips, pomegranates if the price is right ($4 last week!). Stir a grain through.

Sweet beets

Peel. Boil. Salt. That’s it. This cooking method amps up the beets' sweetness and reduces the earthiness. This handy lil side adds a tasty pop of pink. 

Green garden sauce

If you’ve got a green herb surplus (think parsley, basil, coriander) simply chop fine, smoosh into the bottom of a clean jar, add salt, cover in oil. Now you’ve got a salad dressing and/or marinade base. Boost the flavour with chilli flakes, pepper, garlic. This goes hard on any roast vegetable.

Carrot ribbons

This one is super simple. Shred your carrots with a cheese grater or cut into long sticks. Sprinkle with salt and lemon juice (or pickle brine, or vinegar – any acid will do). A very punchy flavour!

These little methods have bubbled up as I’ve just cooked stuff rather than tried to make it into a recipe right away. Along the way I’ve gotten the hang of making more sauces, crunchy toppers, dips – yummy accoutrements that bring the cooked stuff all together. 

And when I get a kūmara in my produce box, I think of the sweetest potatoes. The ones Mama Laura so carefully cultivated and transported. The proof is in them. When a vegetable gets delivered to you, it’s probably special enough, sweet enough to stand on its own. So just cook it.

The Spinoff is powered by its supporters

In 2023, Spinoff readers funded some of our most beloved, well-read and impactful work. Help Me Hera, The Cost of Being, powerful longreads, Election 2023 coverage, laugh-out-loud satire, Wellington stories, Christchurch stories and everything in between was powered by Spinoff members and donors. If you did support us, thank you from all of us at The Spinoff. If helping fund well-crafted and insightful journalism is on your list for 2024, donate today or sign up to become a Spinoff member.

Weekly bites

Here’s some bizarre food news. In South Korea eaters are munching on toothpicks and in Christchurch someone is throwing cheese slices at cars. Most toothpicks in South Korea are made of cornstarch, sorbitol and green food dye. So technically edible, although not approved for human consumption – kinda like packing peanuts. Regardless, TikTokers are deep-frying them, coating the resultant puffs in parmesan cheese and eating them. They look kinda good. 3 outta 10 would try. Although government officials are like “Please, no.”

Meanwhile, something funky is afoot in Strowan, a Christchurch suburb. Someone is chucking American cheese slices at parked cars. Drivers are dismayed to find melted cheese food on their windows and everyone is just a bit like “What the hell?” The police are not investigating but at least one person has tried the cheese. It’s cheddar.

Empty drinking vessels are causing a ruckus right now. I saw a bottle of Prime at a dairy yesterday that cost $11.99. At my mate’s primary school they’ve had to ban these drinks outright. This week, one of his students snuck one in and displayed it inside his desk. When my mate got wind of this he made the student throw it out. Later the kid secretly retrieved the bottle from the bin. The empty bottle. Meanwhile adults are going nuts for Stanley Cups. Like Crocs, this legacy brand/product has been resurrected beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Shoppers are fighting each other for new colourways, and while news broke this week that the cups might contain lead, serious collectors seem undeterred.

In France, the restaurant Ratatouille was based on got robbed. Or rather, just realised they got robbed. After completing a large renovation they inventoried their wine cellar. It is so large the wine list weighs 8kg and gets wheeled out on a trolley. Looks like someone was systematically stealing the best bottles. The total loss? €1.5 million. In New Zealand, rats were also a theme this week. A Dunedin Countdown is overrun with them but is… still trading. Sadly the rats will not be able to take a bite out of the supermarket’s $1m-a-day excess profit. However, the Commerce Commission has just opened an investigation into our supermarkets’ dodgy promotional practices.

Snack of the week

Half Baked Salty Chocolate Caramels, $18 for four – see halfbakedcateringco.com for stockists. A shopaholic Gwyneth Paltrow disciple recently laid out her lifestyle for The Spinoff. Her biggest edible indulgence? Half Baked’s mushroom-infused chocolate. I don’t love Gwyneth, but I am an Andrea Hernández disciple – she’s the authoress of the red-hot snack newsletter Snaxshot. So basically I’m a sucker for adaptogenic snacks/drinks. You know, the ones that taste good, make you smarter, prettier and sleep better? I recently found $3 bottles of Ārepa at a dairy and bought them all. In the process of trying to get a good pic of Half Baked’s salty chocolate caramels, I caught myself salivating. And damn… the texture. The chocolate is smooth and creamy, with light coconut notes. It leads to a buttery, rich caramel centre. Somehow the whole thing is vegan. The sticky inside and melty outside play together well giving these treats a lingering quality. The flaky sea salt seals the deal. These are infused with two types of fungi that support beauty and brains. But there’s no weird mushroom flavour to be found. These are just generally delicious chocolates. And our national craft chocolate expert, Luke Owen Smith, agrees. 9/10

Mā te wā,

Liv