Another usual suspect when it comes to food waste in my home is spring onion (or scallions as they call them across the pond). The other day I bought a couple of bunches and I forgot to put them in the fridge. They looked a bit limp the following day. And that’s where the downward spiral starts. They don’t look as crunchy, fresh and inviting as when I bought them and I start to procrastinate. „Shame“, I think and promise myself to use them tomorrow. And the longer I play this game, the worse it gets. They look more wilted and uninspiring over the days. It makes me feel guilty...not only do I think of myself as inconsistent, but cold-hearted, too. Dont laugh! Those spring onions have been growing for weeks and what do I do: procrastinate and later compost them!
Recently I read a good article about some fruit and veg being at their best when they are limp. Not sure if you can generally apply this rule to all fruit and veg. But I remembered this dip I tasted last year at NOPI in London. I was happy to discover it later in the cookbook of the same name by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully. For this dip they encourage you to burn the spring onions until charred... Brilliant! If the spring onions are a bit limp, it’s not a problem at all. Nobody will be able to tell what they originally looked like once they are black and burnt. And if you accidentally burn some spring onions you don’t need to discard them: just use them for this fabulous dip!
The original recipe asks you to cut off the top quarter off the garlic and discard it, which in my opinion is just unnecessary food waste. So here I kept the bulb intact and roasted the whole head.
Burnt spring onion dip
- 1 head garlic
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 150 g (5.29 oz) spring onions (scallions), ends trimmed, sliced in half lengthways if thick
- 1 ½ tablespoons sunflower oil
- 150 g (5.291 oz) cream cheese
- 110 g (3.880 oz) sour cream
- sea salt and black pepper
Preheat the oven to 200 °C (400 °F). Brush the garlic with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and wrap in foil. Place in a small baking dish or on a baking tray and roast in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, leave to cool and when cool enough to handle, squeeze the garlic cloves, discard the skin and mash the garlic cloves with a fork. Set aside.
Brush the spring onions with the sunflower oil. Sprinkle over ¼ teaspoons salt and a generous grind of pepper. Heat a griddle pan to high. When the pan is hot and smoking, add the spring onions, grill for 5-6 minutes, turning them in between. They should be black all over. It’s recommended to ventilate your kitchen well, because the whole process creates quite a bit of smoke. Be courageous when griddling the spring onions, it’s ok when they get quite black. Leave the spring onions to cool, then chop finely. Add the spring onions to a bowl with the cream cheese, sour cream, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, roast garlic puree and another ¼ teaspoon of salt.
