One of the organisations I had documented – Dinner Exchange London, run at the time by the wonderful Brigida Marovelli – was providing catering for an event at City Hall. In attendance was a producer for UKTV’s Good Food Channel, who was inspired by the work Dinner Exchange London were doing – rescuing food that would otherwise have gone to waste and creating gourmet food from it.
They commissioned the creation of 4 videos, which Brigida kindly brought me on-board to produce, showing the creation of four meals using food that would otherwise have gone to waste, gathered from Borough Market and Growing Communities. Because we collected the food the day before creating the recipe, the Brigida needed to alter and adapt the recipe to fit what we managed to get our hands on – this inevitably made for a more challenging experience!
While the key focus is on how to create the recipe, we share information on food waste, and the organisations from whom we gathered the food we used. David Gledhill, Director of Operations at Borough Market explains how the organisation donates about 300kg of fruit and veg every week via 17 different traders, and this is growing steadily; while Fiona McAllister from Growing Communities explains how they are trying to offer residents of Hackney an alternative to a damaging food system.
