Eat your greens: the broccoli edition
A vegan broccoli orzo risotto and a deep dive into plastic packaging
Orzo broccoli risotto
Serves: 2 adults
Takes: around 20 minutes
Ingredients
200 g orzo
2 small to medium-sized broccoli
450 g liquid vegetable stock
1 white onion
2 T olive oil
1 lemon
Optional dukkah topping: 100 g hazelnuts, 1 t coriander seeds, 1 t cumin seeds, salt to taste.
Method
Peel and finely dice onion. Place in frying pan with a dash of olive oil. Cook on low heat for at least 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, boil vegetable stock (make it from scratch if you prefer).
Add the orzo to the frying pan with the onions. Toast the orzo, stirring for 2-3 minutes until the orzo is beginning to go golden.
Add the hot stock to the pan and cover for 8 minutes.
Take the two broccoli and chop off any woody ends. Then blitz on high in a food processor for 20 seconds until they are a mince-like consistency, or chop very finely with a knife.
Add the broccoli, 1 T olive oil and the juice of 1 lemon to the orzo and stir well. Cook for a further 2 minutes. You want the broccoli to retain some bite. Season to taste.
If making dukkah, toast hazelnuts for 5-10 minutes in a pan on a low heat or in the oven. Rub with a tea-towel to remove excess skins. Toast the seeds. Then pound nuts and seeds in a mortar and pestle or mix in a food processor, until they are a rough consistency.
Serve the broccoli risotto in bowls topped with dukkah, lemon zest or juice, olive oil and any fresh green herbs you have to hand.
Should we wrap vegetables in plastic?
This recipe began life as a fridge clean out. There was a limp half celery, a bunch of flaccid carrots, half a celeriac, forgotten in the veggie bin while we’ve been off gallivanting in the sunshine. They went in a pot with a roughly chopped onion to make a stock while I figured out what to cook. Then I discovered two broccoli, still wrapped in their plastic supermarket outfits, smouldering at the back of the fridge. These broccoli were three weeks old and although a little yellow around the gills, they were perfectly edible.
I have a hatred of plastic wrapping around fruit and vegetables and try and avoid it when I can. But I had to face facts. Those broccoli would have been long gone had they not come wrapped in a thin layer of plastic wrap that preserved their moisture and freshness. So I ended up doing a deep dive into the law and science around plastic packaging and sustainability. Here are some highlights.
The main takeaway is that from an environmental perspective, food wastage is a bigger enemy to sustainability than plastic packaging. The UN estimates that between 40-50 percent of root crops, fruits, and vegetables are wasted every year.
In some cases, food wastage could be avoided with proper packaging. One recent Swiss study based on cucumbers imported from Spain found that each cucumber that has to be thrown away has the equivalent environmental impact of 93 plastic cucumber wraps. The use of plastic wrapping lowers the cucumber losses at retail by an estimated 4.8%. The reality is that plastic packaging represents a fraction of the environmental impact, accounting for only 1% of a cucumber’s emissions.
On the other hand, the Swiss study did not take into account the impact of plastic packaging on food wastage in the home. Another study by the UK NGO Wrap, found that selling products such as broccoli or bananas loose and removing best before dates could result in a combined saving of around 100,000 tonnes of household food waste, more than 10,300 tonnes of plastic and 130,000 tonnes of CO2e. When vegetables are pre-packaged in set quantities, people may buy more than they need, leading to additional food waste. Wrap calls for plastic packaging for uncut fresh fruit and vegetables to be removed unless demonstrated to reduce food waste. But such a policy might be impracticable to implement in practice, since it would require analysis for every type of fruit and vegetable.
The second, and really interesting takeaway is that we tend to overestimate the importance of cutting out plastic when assessing actions we can take to reduce climate emissions. In one 2019 study, 22% of respondents thought that reducing plastic bags was the most important thing they could do. But in reality, cutting down on plastic use is far down the list. Eating seasonally will save more CO2 than avoiding plastic and so will eating vegetarian. Having fewer children, improving heating and insulation, taking fewer flights and cutting down car travel will also all have a much bigger impact for most people living in the West.
The third takeaway is that it still makes sense from a sustainability perspective to seek out locally grown fruit and vegetables and to eat these when in season. Avoiding plastic wrapping was a big motivator for me to explore local food boxes and direct from farm options. Those are still good things to do, but the advantages for the environment may come more from reducing transportation costs and food wastage than avoiding plastic. The more demand there is from consumers to eat locally, the more emphasis will be placed on developing these shorter supply chains. Meanwhile, plastic wrapping will remain important to preserve fruit and vegetables with longer supply chains.
Fourth: a note on the legal regime.* From 3 July 2021, the EU banned certain varieties of single-use plastics, including packaging for food. Great, I thought, no more plastic wrapping for vegetables. But vegetables or fruit that are not typically consumed in a single-sitting or that require additional preparations are excluded. So, for example, snack-sized cherry tomatoes probably can’t be sold in plastic, but a single head of lettuce can. The result is that most fruit and vegetables in Dutch supermarkets continue to be sold in plastic.
Meanwhile in France, a new law came into force this year banning plastic wrapping for a number of vegetables: such as cucumbers, peppers, courgettes, aubergines, leeks, “normal” carrots, round tomatoes (what, as opposed to square tomatoes?) and many fruit. Broccoli were not on the list. Broccoli producers have until the end of 2024 to find “une solution alternative”. Interestingly, one French reporter noted that people were struggling to find ways to store the vegetables at home without packaging. I can’t find any evidence for it, but one can imagine an unintended consequence of the law being that people buy more ziplock bags or plastic wrap to store their vegetables in, which would be a terrible irony. Storing them in the fridge in a reusable plastic bag or a damp cloth usually does the job.
In sum, as with most things in life, the issue is not black and white. Certainly we should push for plastic to be reduced as much as possible, but sometimes there may be a justifiable reason for its use to avoid food wastage, and ultimately, that has a much bigger environmental impact.
Let me finish by looping back to this week’s broccoli orzo risotto recipe, just when you thought I’d forgotten what we were doing here altogether. If you do nothing else, please give blending up broccoli a go. Add it to your pesto pasta, replace your meaty mince with broccoli mince in a spaghetti bolognese recipe, or stir it into a classic risotto. It will turn a pallid white dish a vivid, lovely green and I promise you will not notice that you’ve just sat down and eaten an entire broccoli for dinner. Eating your greens has never been so easy. Broccoli also pairs beautifully with the roasted hazelnuts in the dukkah and the lemon juice really elevates the dish. The better your stock, the deeper the flavours will be. The resulting risotto is simple but delicious.
You’re still here? Ah, you rock! Glad to know I’m not the only one who gets obsessed with this stuff. I’d love to hear your views. Otherwise, see you next week.
Amelia.
PS a bonus update from our balcony. We returned from a weekend away to discover that two magical eggs have been laid in the beautifully-woven wood pigeon nest. For a photo of the proud parents see last week’s newsletter.
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*Disclaimer: the information collated here and in my newsletters is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice on any subject matter.