I’ve been writing about minimising food waste for years, but I only really started to get serious about this when I signed on to help food rescue organisation SecondBite, 10 years ago. The food SecondBite saves is redistributed by 1,200 partners to help feed those in need.

Earlier this year, SecondBite passed the momentous milestone of collecting and redistributing 100 million kilos of good food that otherwise would have gone to landfill. That’s 200 million meals! And that’s just the stuff they get from Coles. There are a host of other growers, manufacturers, producers and stores that they work with as well.

The first half of this year has been all about working towards a solution to a big waste problem across the Aussie food supply chain – what to do with bread that’s gone stale. Together with Jo Barrett of Little Picket in Lorne, ex-MasterChef alum Michael Weldon and the CSIRO, we’ve been looking at ways to minimise the thousands of kilos of stale bread thrown away each month. We’ve been trying to find tasty products we might be able to make commercially from this bread. Profits could then become a revenue stream for SecondBite. Ideas have ranged from snacks and breakfast cereals to traditional solutions such as gnocchi and a Tuscan polenta called pearà made from grated bread.

Our stale bread initiative was prompted by a discussion with the CSIRO about food powder products it makes with waste from cauliflower, broccoli and pumpkin crops. I’m a big fan of using broccoli stems and cauliflower leaves, and over the years I’ve also played with skins and leaves of other fruit and veg. Last year I made a rather delightful eggplant and banana peel curry that you can still find here. I’ve also used potato skins leftover from making gnocchi to make potato wedges, and pumpkin skins as delicate soft taco shells. I’ve used onion skins to help give a golden hue to chicken stocks and made citrus cakes that use the whole fruit – flesh, skin, pith and all. Try Shannon Bennett’s semolina, almond and orange cake with lemon curd.

Related story: The SecondBite food appeal is back this winter, here’s how you can help 

Recently on the radio, someone asked whether broccoli leaves were edible, so after checking that they weren’t poisonous, I took some leaves off the broccoli growing in my front garden, shredded them and fried them up with butter and lemon. Delicious! As fine as silverbeet in my book. So, this month’s zero-waste recipe features stale bread and the broccoli leaves you might usually throw in the compost. If you don’t have any broccoli leaves, silverbeet or spinach will do just as well.

Make Matt’s zero-waste bread gnocchi with broccoli leaves recipe here.