Waste not want not: Making every scrap count

Many top chefs admit our current food practices are not sustainable. Ash Heeger is one. She served lunch in Johannesburg last week before her talk on sustainable food practices at the Spier Secret Food Festival.

Heeger is making waves on the local food scene, having returned to South Africa after a stint in the UK at chef Brett Graham's The Ledbury - voted best restaurant in the UK in 2014 and 20th on the San Pellegrino Best Restaurants in the World list - and at Heston Blumenthal's Dinner, which came seventh on the San Pellegrino list.

Before that she worked with Luke Dale Roberts at The Test Kitchen and La Colombe in Cape Town after graduating from the Silwood School of Cookery. Heeger leapt at the opportunity to come home when Andy Fenner of Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants suggested they open a space together.

The result, Publik Wine, is an unassuming wine bar located among hanging beef and pork parts inside Fenner's butchery.

Recently Heeger opened her own restaurant in collaboration with Fenner and Publik, Ash, which follows the current trend of cooking over an indoor braai (comparisons have been made with David Higgs's popular new spot in Johannesburg).

Heeger favours a nose-to-tail kind of eating. She tries to use every bit of each animal and vegetable, finding a place for the peels in stocks and for the tops in pesto. Ash's biggest waste is beef fat, but Heeger insists that it will soon be made into soap.

Ash serves dishes such as sweet and sticky ribs, puffed pigskin crackling, and rolled lamb. Its signature dish is pig head scrumpet: succulent pigs' head meat with a crunchy outer crumb, Szechuan-spiced apple sauce and perfect petals of onion.

"In the world of fine dining not a lot of 'hows', 'whys' or 'wheres' are asked," says Heeger. "Where does the meat come from, how far have the vegetables travelled to get to me, how are the dairy cows treated before I get the milk? I never asked those questions before now. I was too busy trying to forge my way in the world. But when we opened this restaurant I started wanting to know."

Although all the food is prepared on flames, she uses the coals to impart several flavour profiles into each dish. Various methods - from grilling to braaing to slow roasting - create a range of textures in the food. The mushroom and egg dish is a must, but be quick to sample it because when mushroom season is over you'll wait a year before it's on the menu again.

"We won't have a tomato on the menu for 10 months or asparagus for eight months of the year when they're not in season. I'd love to throw an avo onto something in December but I won't do that," says Heeger.

Everything is picked for sustainability, quality, seasonality and farming methods. South African free-range standards are notoriously loose, for example - livestock that gets one hour of sunlight is graded the same as livestock that lives in pasture.

"The only way we're sure of the quality of the produce, and that the animals are treated with respect before they land up on our plates, is by going to the farms and the abattoirs ourselves," she says.

The menu is based on what Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants has available. Fenner sources only grass-fed, sustainable meat. Dairy is sourced from free-range supplier The Dairy and vegetables come from Harvest of Hope - a community-run project of 146 vegetable allotments in the informal settlements of Guguletu.

Heeger admits that sustainable food practice is a trend but she says it's a good one. ''Hopefully in 10 years' time we care even more about where the food on our plates comes from," she says.

''Running a restaurant with sustainable practices slices profit margins in half," says Heeger - but she insists there's no other way forward if you want to live healthier and make a difference to the world around you.

• Next time you're in Cape Town, taste the difference at Ash, 81 Church Street. Get your grass-fed meat at Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants in Cape Town or Braeside Butchery in Joburg. Find out what fish is on the red endangered list on the Sassi app and get a box of local veg for R60 a week from harvestofhope.org.za