Nothing should be wasted......

I hate throwing food out.  It's just a pet peeve to waste.  I only buy what we will eat and I will use what I buy.

So when I get a lobster and am doing an elegant meal I will not discard pieces I've chopped off to make the plate more pretty nor will I throw out the shells before I've extracted flavour.  I'm like that with everything.  I have so much stock in the freezer because I cannot buy a duck or chicken which I tend to bone out without making stock.  Actually it goes so far as lemons - I grate the skin using a microplane and freeze it as I always have a call for lemon zest.

OK so back to this lobster.....took all of 30 minutes in total to get the shells caramelized, adding some onion for sweetness, a touch of water a titch of infused saffron, cooked down, strained, checked for salt, sugar, pepper, acid balance (a teeny squeeze of lemon), and viola, into a wide rimmed small bowel plate, topped with some of the leftover poached lobster meat and a few caramalised tomatoes that I had done between baking trays using a weight.

Divine.  No I simply will not throw food out and when I see people do it well it simply screams of waste and disregard.

Although I do admit I have the time.  I'm not living in cloud do do land and I know but simply don't care that I sound slightly over the top!!

Bisque, poached lobster and caramalised tomatoes.

Another time I had some tomatoes that called for seeding, skinning and the chopping of the flesh.  Ummmm well to be honest I rarely seed and skin tomatoes but when elegance is called for I will bow to this tedious task.  What to do with this skin I ask myself...surely I can resurect it somehow?  So I made up a quick fresh tomato soup, just a taster amount as a starter, popped the tomato skins in the oven with a drizzle of oil and salt and within minutes I had beautiful shard type leaves of crispy glassy tomato skins.  I always do this with skins now as they are pretty and very delicious (and do not need deep frying as some might say).