The Minnesota Chapter Leadership Legacy Network (LLN) Event and Zone 4 Meeting was held on Tuesday, April 4 at The Waters of Edina. In honor of the upcoming Stop Food Waste Day on April 28, System Executive Chef Jeremy Thornhill crafted a unique menu featuring unusual and tasty items using imperfectly delicious produce (IDP) and other ingredients often discarded during meal preparation and food manufacturing.
Minnesota Chapter LLN Event and Zone 4 Meeting Menu
Chicken skin canapé with buffalo chicken mousse and celery leaf gelee (used IDP celery)
"Fish and Chips" - fried salmon skins, fennel fronds and garlic chips with grapefruit zest, and fried potato skins with fennel remoulade, served in mini newspaper cones (fish skin sourced from fish processed at American Fish that would be thrown away)
Pickled cucumber butts (sourced from Bix where they normally would be thrown away)
Wilted cabbage core salad with bacon ends and cider vinaigrette
(used the cores and lettuces that were starting to wilt; sautéed the greens and served warm as a non-traditional presentation)
Spent grain coffee stout coffee cake (spent grains sourced from a local brewery after they brewed a Russian Imperial Stout)
Strawberry-Rhubarb tartlet (used bruised fruits that would normally get tossed)
"These ingredients were perfectly suitable, yet are most often thrown away or sent to pig farmers. There's a lot we can do to stop food waste, including utilizing IDP and getting creative with our trimmings," said Jeremy Thornhill, System Executive Chef at The Waters Restaurant Group.
Compass Group launched their Imperfectly Delicious Produce (IDP) program in May of 2014 to fight food and water waste by “rescuing” or purchasing imperfect fruits and vegetables from growers and distributors—produce that might have otherwise been sent to a landfill simply for not meeting an artificial standard of attractiveness. It’s estimated that every pound of vegetables saved keeps up to 20 gallons of water from being wasted. In the program's first year of limited operation, 221,000 pounds of produce were saved, resulting in 4.4 million gallons of water saved in nine states.
For more information about Compass Group's IDP program, see http://www.compass-usa.com/compass-group-usa-and-california-growers-perfect-response-to-the-drought-imperfectly-delicious-produce/
Tina Plant | Sr. Marketing Manager | The Waters Restaurant Group |