“Leaf to Root” – a fantastic cookbook!

Silver medal for Smart Aging!

Just imagine, Smart Aging was awarded last month with the GAD silver medal. I enjoyed driving up to Frankfurt to the awards and the Frankfurt Book Fair and I met so many interesting people!

“Leaf to Root”  was awarded with a GAD gold medal and I was happy to meet Esther Kern and Pascal Haag, the two authors of the book.

Back home I instantly bought the book. It is only available in German so far, but I am pretty confident that it will make its way to an English edition.

Esther Kern has collected a huge knowledge about edible and poisonous vegetable parts, this book is a real work of reference! The thought behind is, to use the entire vegetable in the kitchen and while cooking. We throw away the greens from carrots without thinking, never think about using the roots of kale and so on.

Pascal Haag has developed amazing recipes for these parts of the plants we rarely use. Sylvain Müller has put these recipes in wonderful images – the whole book is a pleausure to look at. And if you start to cook from it, you will love it!

 

 

Pesto: today à la “Leaf to Root” 

I seed out radish in September in our little garden and despite the colder weather they are still growing very well. I always thought: “it is such a shame to throw away the greens”, but I never did anything with it. So the recipe for the radish-leaf-pesto out of “Leaf to Roots” was perfect for me!

 

Nothing was wasted from the whole bunch of radishes you see here! Amazing! We ate the radishes in a salad or even with a little butter and salt on top. And all the green went straight into the pesto!

 

 

Spaghetti with Radish-Leaf-Goat Cheese-Pesto

Recipe from Pascal Haag out of the book “Leaf to Root”

• 2 tbs pine-nuts
• 100 g radish-leaves
• 15 g goat-cheese, grated
• 30 g cottage cheese (goat)
• 50 ml olive oill
• long pepper, grinded ( I used black pepper)
• salt
• 500 g spaghetti

Roast the pine nuts without fat until golden and let them cool down. Put them together with the radish-leaves, the goat cheeses and the olive oil in a bowl and blend it together. Salt and pepper.

Cook the spaghetti al dente and mix with the pesto. Delicious!

 

 

For those who understand german, you can watch the funny little film: kleines Filmen des BR