Business & Economy

From zero-waste cooking to veganism, Glasgow changes the menu for COP26

By Judith Mora

Glasgow, UK, Nov 7 (EFE).- Inspired by COP26’s calls for sustainability, Christopher McComiskey, head chef of the Glasgow-based The Finnieston restaurant, started utilizing ingredients that used to be of no culinary value to create a new kind of delicious sustainable cuisine.

Under McComiskey’s supervision, nothing goes to waste, whether lemon skin, trout heads, or the worst cuts of cod.

He puts the inedible parts of citrus fruits to use in cocktails and oils to bring out the best in oysters; melts butter into the fish broth to season trout fished from Loch Melfort along with cabbage and bacon, and mixes chunks of cod, prawns and mussels into a spicy Bengali-style curry.

“Basically, we use everything,” he tells Efe while he dishes out his creations in a busy kitchen preparing for the lunch shift.

The Finnieston, operated by restaurateur Graham Suttle, is one of 41 restaurants taking part in the Plate up for Glasgow hospitality-led campaign developed by entrepreneur Rebecca Ricketts during COP26, where each restaurant offers at least one dish prepared to challenge wasteful dining and sending as little organic waste as possible to the landfill.

“Well for us, Plate Up for Glasgow represented in my opinion is the future of hospitality in terms of food and drink. We’ve got a duty as operators to do better,” Suttle tells Efe.

Ricketts explains that participants are encouraged “to look at one of four ways that they can reduce food waste.”

“Those four parameters are maybe looking at serving a dish or a drink using surplus food, or it could be looking at repurposing existing ingredients that normally are going to be thrown away into the bin, or we are looking for them to showcase the nose-to-tail concept or the root-to-shoot where every part of the animal or every part of the vegetable is used.

“The final part is looking at revisiting what our grandparents used to do and looking at ways of extending a product’s shelf life, such as pickling or smoking or dehydrating and fermenting.”

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