Frugality can be a great teacher. It forces us to think on our feet. Forces it to improvise. And kitchens across the world are best examples of rising to the challenge of frugality.
A big part of what we throw away in kitchens are the stalks and peels of vegetables. Most of them pack a lot nutrients and are also a lot of flavours. Winter vegetables like carrots, cauliflowers, radish are still available in the market, and probably those are what a lot of us stocked our refrigerators with. The stalks and peels of these vegetables add great flavour to the stock. In fact I even used the peels and ends from onions and garlic, and ginger peels to flavour my stock.
I just collected the peels of carrots, pumpkin, radish ends and stalks, mature cauliflower stalks, outer leaf and stalk of the cabbage, corainder roots and stalks, mushroom stalks, peels of ginger, and peels and ends of onion and garlic. I did that over a week, putting them in airtight bag and refrigerating those.
To a cup of mixed peels, I added three cups of water, and brought to a slow boil. Added some salt and a few peppercorns. Kept it on a slow boil for 7-10 minutes, strained and refrigerated the stock in airtight containers.
It makes a good, deep master stock and refrigerates really well.
Half of the stock went to making a hearty bowl of noodle soup. Some of it, I used to cook rice in.
Both turned out flavour packed and delicious.
